Judge Delays Wolf Kill Pt 3

Judge Delays Wolf Kill Pt 3

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
I'm Bob Larson. A judge will determine Friday if he wants to extend a restraining order on a wolf kill. Two environmental groups requested the order hours after it was decided to remove a wolf from the Togo pack in Ferry County following a series of attacks on cattle.

Representative Joel Kretz says the two-week delay is ludicrous ...

KRETZ ... "The way they're having wolf attacks up there right now, and I've been up there several times, I know what's going on, there's all the preventative stuff has been done, all the non-lethal. The guy has spent 16, 18-hour days trying to keep his cattle safe and there could be another six or eight dead cattle by then."

Kretz says the compensation argument is silly ...

KRETZ ... "Science shows, for every one killed there's another seven out there in the brush you'll never find. You've got much lower pregnancy rates the cattle. They come in thin at the end of the grazing season because they've been harassed the whole time by wolves and there's dozen other financial things that are huge costs to the rancher that will never be compensated for so there's no making this whole."

The judge's ruling came just days after a settlement requiring Fish and Wildlife to give one-day notice before killing wolves ...

KRETZ ... "That was the whole point of that settlement was so that they would be well prepared to sue and they had everything written up, I'm sure, long before the lethal order came down. They sure couldn't have done it in an hour, come in with an inch-and-a-half tall stack of papers.

This is something that the groups that don't want solutions are doing."

We'll bring you an update next week.

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