A man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped the injured animal’s mouth shut and brought it into a bar, prompting moves to tighten Wyoming’s animal cruelty laws.
Wyoming’s animal cruelty law does not currently apply to predators such as wolves. Under draft legislation that will be put in front of a legislative committee on Monday, people would still be able to intentionally run over wolves, but only if they use “all reasonable efforts” to kill it, either on impact or shortly afterwards.
The bill does not specify how a surviving wolf is to be killed after it is intentionally struck.
The fate of the wolf struck last winter in western Wyoming prompted scrutiny of the state’s policies.
The animal was pictured lying on a bar floor in Sublette County and led to calls to boycott Wyoming’s $4.8 billion-a-year (£3.6 million) tourism industry centred on Yellowstone and Grand Teton national park – prime wolf habitats. This has had little effect, with Yellowstone on track for one of its busiest summer seasons on record.
Wildlife campaigners have pushed back against reluctance in the ranching state to change laws written after long negotiations to remove federal protection for the species.
Further changes to the draft bill may be in the works, but the proposal being discussed on Monday would not change much, according to Kristin Combs, the executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates.
“Everybody is against torturing animals. There is not a person I’ve come across so far that has said: ‘Yes, I want to continue to do that’,” Ms Combs said on Friday.
The man who hit the wolf – and killed it after showing it off – paid a $250 fine for illegal possession of wildlife, but did not face tougher charges.
Investigators in Sublette County said their inquiries into the wolf incident have stalled because witnesses refuse to talk.
On Friday, Clayton Melinkovich, the county attorney, said by email that the case remained under investigation and he could not comment on its details.
Killings unreported
How often wolves in Wyoming are intentionally run over – for a quick death or otherwise – is unknown. Such killings do not have to be reported and recorded cases such as the Sublette County incident are rare.
The case brought fresh attention to Wyoming’s policies for killing wolves, which are the least restrictive of any state where the animals roam.
Wolves kill sheep, cattle and game animals, making them unpopular throughout the rural country of ranchers and hunters.
Across the region, state laws seek to keep the predators from proliferating outside of the mountainous Yellowstone ecosystem and into other areas where ranchers run cattle and sheep.
In most of the US, wolves are federally protected as an endangered or threatened species, but not in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, where they are hunted and trapped under state laws and regulations. In Wyoming, wolves may be killed without limit in 85 per cent of the state outside the Yellowstone region.
Though few people in Wyoming have spoken out in favour of what happened to the wolf, officials have been reluctant to change the law to discourage mistreatment.
Jim Magagna with the Wyoming Stock Growers Association condemned what happened, but called it an isolated incident unrelated to the state’s wolf management laws.
