A statewide tip line offering a $5,000 reward for assistance in wildlife cases has received one wolf tip call in four years. That came in an incident in which a hunter killed a wolf, cut off its tail and bragged about the conquest to so many people that authorities required little help to make a case.
Assistant U.S. Atty. George Bretsameter, the prosecutor in the Sundles case, said that in his 19 years in the Boise office, he's taken four wildlife cases to trial.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday December 28, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 70 words Type of Material: Correction
Gray wolves -- An article in Tuesday's Section A about tensions over the federal effort to reintroduce wolves into parts of the West wrongly attributed to Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal a statement that Wyoming considered the Endangered Species Act no longer in force and "now considers the wolf as a federal dog." The statement, which was circulated on the Internet, was purportedly from Freudenthal but was in fact a hoax.
Officials hope that once wolves are removed from the endangered species list and legally hunted, some of the anger here will dissipate. But there is also a fear that delisting could lead to the sort of unregulated hunting that all but erased wolves from the West.
"I have spent a career presenting facts on deaf ears," said Carter Niemeyer, Fish and Wildlife's wolf coordinator based in Boise, who spends much of his time trying to debunk myths about wolves.
"It's like Groundhog Day: You get up in the morning and start all over again. That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to retiring. I'm spinning my wheels."
