Wildlife activists and others are calling on tourists to boycott Wyoming in light of an incident last summer in which a man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut, and showed it off at a bar before killing it.
The man paid a $250 ticket for illegal possession of wildlife but has so far avoided more serious charges. Advocates of a boycott say the incident was a direct result of state laws that give people wide leeway to kill gray wolves with little oversight.
Wyoming has the nation’s least restrictive policies for killing wolves, There are limits on hunting and trapping in the northwestern corner of the state, including Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, but wolves can be freely killed in the rest of the state.
The social media accounts of Wyoming’s tourism agency are being flooded with comments urging people to steer clear of the Cowboy State.
One California woman posted that she’s scrapping plans to hold her wedding next year in Wyoming. The post was among hundreds of similar comments on social media in recent weeks, many with a #boycottwyoming hashtag
Governor Mark Gordon and other leaders have been sharply critical of what happened and that the man responsible hasn’t faced any serious consequences yet.
Rancher and Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Director Jim Magagna agrees and calls the case an “abusive” isolated incident unrelated to the state’s wolf management laws.
Magagna says “it never should have been done” and that no livestock producer condones it, adding that while the incident has gotten a lot of media attention, it doesn’t reflect how Wyoming manages wolves to deal with livestock issues or anything.
Wolves were almost totally wiped out in the lower 48 states by the mid-1900s, but are now federally protected as an endangered or threatened species in most of the U-S, but not the Northern Rockies.
Wyoming, Idaho and Montana allow wolves to be hunted and trapped, after their numbers rebounded following their reintroduction to Yellowstone and central Idaho almost 30 years ago.