A poster appeared on Facebook about an obscene scheme whereby the wolf-hating “Foundation for Wildlife Management” is offering a $1,000 reward for a trapped and killed wolf nearly everywhere in Idaho. The website, F4WM.org , states that they are using grant funds received from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Community Challenge Grant and funding from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to pay this bounty. This foundation must have very close ties to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game commissioners and have thus sold the whole plan to the commissioners. The foundation (is it a legal 501c3?) is also supported by the Idaho Cattlemen and Idaho Farm Bureau, both of which hope to exterminate the wolves that were re-introduced in 1995 in Idaho.

I am hopeful this scheme will result in an investigation into this whole operation. It looks very much like the Idaho Department of Fish and Game Commission is making public policy about your wildlife to benefit livestock and hunters without regard to the science of an entire staff of IDFG wildlife biologists. Instead, the commission chooses to support this foundation’s program and made it possible for F4WM to fund this trapping and killing of Idaho wildlife. The Community Challenge Grant program administered by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game is meant to fund protection and restoration of habitat for the benefit of wildlife. But evidently the commissioners do not include predators, especially wolves, in their duty to protect wildlife with good strong science-based policy.