Pack of Wolves In Wyoming Kill 19 Elk In Rare ‘Sport Killing’
A pack of wolves in slaughtered nineteen elk on Tuesday night in what officials are calling a rare “sport killing,” according to a report by the Associated Press.
Wildlife officials in the western Wyoming town of Bondurant have never seen anything quite like it. Wolves usually eat all the prey or return to feed later — in this case, the elk carcasses were barely touched. Since the pack didn’t stick around to eat their kills, they seemingly killed the herd of elk just for fun.
“It appears to be sport killing,” John Lund of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department told CNN. Although “surplus killing,” or killing for sport without intention to eat, is a common behavior among many species of predators in nature, the phenomenon is rare amongst wolves.
“There is a significant concern among wildlife managers,” Lund added. “Our concern is big game.”
Wyoming wolves kill 19 elk in suspected "surplus killing" – https://t.co/i6JImt66BW pic.twitter.com/YDVi6ZCl9z
— KTVQ – Q2 News (@KTVQ) March 25, 2016
The elk, consisting of seventeen calves and two adult cows, were found dead on a feeding ground where a contractor delivering feed to the herd discovered the carcasses. The pack suspected of killing the elk has nine wolves — the elk appear to have all been killed in one night while they feasted on grass and alfalfa hay brought to them by wildlife officials.
“The killing happened at an elk feedground where state wildlife managers put out hay to help elk survive the winter,” Associated Press reported. “Seventeen of the elk killed were calves born last year.”
About 1,100 elk live in the area, and about seven percent of the population has been lost to wolves this winter.
“We’re not sure what triggers surplus killing,” Lund told USA Today. “because in many cases predators will kill with the intent to eat, but in this case something triggered and they went crazy and just took down each elk and moved on to the next.”
A report by the Independent indicated that the elk would be tested for disease, as vulnerability from illness is one theory why a wolf pack would kill so many elk at one time.
“Wolves are hard-wired to detect signs of weakness in their prey before attacking – they will rarely risk injury or waste energy on a chase – and so coming across herd of diseased and vulnerable elk could have triggered the wolves to kill the herd, even if they did not need or want all of them for food.”
A pack of wolves slaughtered 19 elk in a "sport killing," Wyoming wildlife officials said https://t.co/dagVCihkT5 pic.twitter.com/eMnFEKZpb3
— CNN (@CNN) March 26, 2016
Unfortunately, there is little Wyoming officials can do to prevent such major losses of elk. Wolves in Wyoming remain federally protected and managed as an endangered species. The federal agency could kill wolves that are killing livestock, but not wildlife.
In 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planned to remove gray wolves from the endangered list, which would have turned over management to the state of Wyoming and allowed local authorities to regulate hunting of wolves. However, in 2014, a federal judge at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia overruled the decision.
According to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s website, wolves were once nearly extinct in the United States before they were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, after which the population grew and spread across the west.
Environmental groups in Wyoming also say that any plans for managing the wolves would put the local wolf population at risk. The conservation group WildEarth Guardians sued the federal government over its plan to take wolves off the endangered list, arguing that the Wyoming elk population is 24 percent over its objective of 85,000 elk.
So far, there have been no reports of wolves attacking humans in the area.
[Photo by Michael Smith/Newsmakers/Getty Images]
