Six Gray Wolves in Washington Were Fatally Poisoned, Officials Say

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is investigating the deaths of six gray wolves that were poisoned. There are rewards available for information about the poisonings.

According to a news release from the department, four dead wolves from the Wedge pack were found in February. Two more wolves were found dead within a month.

According to officials, all six wolves died from eating poison, but they didn't say how the animals came in contact with it.

The pack had caused trouble before. The adult female member of the pack was killed in July 2020. The wolves were killed in a month.

There was no response from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on Tuesday.

A group of eight organizations, including Northwest Animals Rights Network and Washington Wildlife First, are offering rewards for information that leads to a conviction in the poisoning case.

Even with the use of publicly funded deterrents and state intervention in response to depredations there is still a situation where someone feels compelled to do this. We need to find ways to allow wolves to live in this wild country.

The poisonings were a terrible loss to the state's wolf population. She said that the act flies in the face of efforts to recover and coexist with wolves.

The gray wolves are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act in western portions of the state. There were 206 wolves in the state at the end of the year. The results of the population survey will be released in the spring.

It's a crime to kill a wolf and you can be fined up to $5,000.

The public was asked to help solve a case in which wolves were found dead from poisoning. The case was not clear if it had been solved.

The debate over the protection and management of wolves in the US has been going on for almost 50 years.

In February, gray wolves regained federal protection in most of the lower 48 states after a court ruled against the Trump administration's decision to remove the animals from the list.

Wolf hunting went up after gray wolves were removed from the list.

Gray wolves lived in forests, prairies, mountains and wetlands before Europeans arrived. The population in the lower 48 states was wiped out by two centuries of eradication campaigns.

The species was placed under federal protection. In 2020, there were 6,000 wolves in the western Great Lakes and Northern Rockies.