Living with Wolves

IDAHO’S WAR ON WOLVES INCLUDES PUPS Records show that Idaho is now killing pups. In the state’s escalating war on wolves, this is something new. Idaho has been steadily ratcheting up its assault on the recovering wolf population especially since the day in 2011 when wolves lost federal protections under the Endangered Species Act. It’s easy to grow numb to...

  It may seem a stretch that wolves could benefit trout. One lives in water, the other on land. How could their lives be interwoven? Scientific discoveries have shown that the presence of wolves and other predators leads to clear, deep and cool mountain streams lined with lush vegetation and beaver ponds. What connects wolves to water systems and to...

Wolves Do Not Kill For Sport Like all other predators, wolves kill for sustenance and survival. They kill other animals to feed themselves, their pack members and their young. The case could be made that some sportsmen kill for sport and not food. But unlike that segment of the human population, wolves do not kill for sport. The word “sport”...

As settlers moved west, they brought the pre-conceived notion that predators held no real value in the natural world. It was during the westward expansion of the late 19th century and through the first few decades of the 20th century that, this top-level carnivore was wiped out in the American West. The frontier had been tamed, but at what cost?...

Traps Set With No Warnings In March of 2020, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) received a petition requesting that trappers be required to place warning signs at public trailheads, and on public trails and campgrounds within 25 feet of traps and snares. At the following quarterly meeting, IDFG decided against the petition. The intent was for signs...

What Is Living with Wolves? Living with Wolves is a national nonprofit organization uniquely positioned to inform you about wolves, a species unjustly persecuted by policy makers, ranchers, hunters and trappers. After the life-changing experience of living with the Sawtooth Pack in the mountains of Idaho, Emmy award-winning filmmakers, Jim and Jamie Dutcher, turned their attention to countering the widespread...

Traps May Be Closer Than You Realize Locals and tourists alike flock to Idaho’s gorgeous outdoor recreation areas throughout the year. Many of them enjoy the outdoors with their dogs. Most are probably unaware that potentially lethal traps and snares can be set alarmingly close to public trails and campgrounds. Trappers are allowed to set leg-hold traps and snares only...

Traps are Indiscriminate For many thousands of years people have been trapping animals. Originally, animals were trapped as a matter of survival for the trapper, providing food and fur for clothing and blankets. Most of the world no longer has a survival-based need for trapping. People have access to other, more humane sources of food and clothing. Though demand in...

Trapping Trends Trapping animals is still common practice in many parts of the world. Although the demand for products made from animal fur has decreased in Europe and America, there is still a market for fur elsewhere in the world, particularly in Russia and China. Millions of animals, referred to as “furbearers,” are trapped every year to strip them of...

You can see a lot of wolf in your dog. We recognize the face, a broad mask that tapers into a long muzzle. We have looked into the eyes, bright with curiosity. We understand the messages conveyed through posture: the alertness in a cocked ear, the playfulness of a bow, the confidence and fear, both revealed by an expressive tail....