Morning Mix

High-schoolers tracked a wolf pack for years. The feds killed eight of the pups, conservationists say.



A wolf leaps across a road into the wilds of central Idaho. In May, Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a law allowing private contractors to kill 90 percent of the state’s wolf population, which officials estimate is about 1,500. (Douglas Pizac/AP)

By Julian Mark
Today at 7:33 a.m. EDT

Students at Timberline High School in Boise, Idaho, have been studying a group of wolves — known as the Timberline wolf pack — in a nearby national forest since 2003. But sometime in the spring, biologists who track the pack noticed its den was empty, which was unusual, said wolf conservationist Suzanne Asha Stone.

After conservationists obtained a wolf “mortality list” from the state’s Department of Fish and Game, they realized pups in the Boise National Forest’s Timberline pack were killed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services branch, Stone told The Washington Post.

Michel Liao, a student at Timberline High, was shocked when he found out. ... “I understand a lot of people think wolves are dangerous animals,” Liao, a member of the school’s environmental club, told The Washington Post. “But it was so shocking to see that federal agents were the ones to come into a pups’ den to kill them, even though the pups didn’t do anything.”

The incident came as Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) in May signed a law allowing private contractors to kill 90 percent of the state’s wolf population, which officials estimate is about 1,500. ... In August, wolf conservationist groups called on the Agriculture Department to “immediately suspend the killing of wolf pups on all public lands.”

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By Julian Mark
Julian Mark is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. Before joining The Post, he covered housing and policing for Mission Local in San Francisco. Twitter https://twitter.com/badjujusf