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Yellowstone Park Officials Offer $10,000 Reward After White Wolf Was Shot Dead

Yellowstone Park Officials Offer $10,000 Reward After White Wolf Was Shot Dead

The animal was popular with tourists.

Michael Minay

Michael Minay

The shooting of a rare white wolf has prompted the staff at Yellowstone National Park in America to offer reward for the killer.

Park officials are offering $5,000 (£3,879) while a a wolf advocacy group matched the reward with another $5,000.

Officials at the world's first national park had to put the wolf down after hikers found the animal suffering in the northern edge of the park, near Montana.

They 12-year-old wolf was the alpha-female of the group, dubbed the Canyon Pack, and was a popular target for photographers.

The park is offering the reward for information which leads to a conviction after announcing that a preliminary necropsy found that the wolf had been shot.

Credit: Yellowstone National Park

President Marc Cook, from The Montana group Wolves of the Rockies, followed it up by matching the offer.

He believes that the killer is someone who was angry about the reintroduction of wolves to the park over 20 years ago.

Marc said: "People take matters into their own hands and feel they are above the law and they kind of flaunt that fact that they can do what they want to do and there's no repercussions."

Yellowstone National Park Facts

  • The park is 96 percent in Wyoming, 3 per cent in Montana, and 1 per cent in Idaho.
  • Yellowstone had 1,000-3,000 earthquakes annually.
  • There are more than 300 active geysers, and 290 waterfalls.
  • It's home to 67 species of mammals, 285 species of birds, 16 species of fish, and six species of reptiles.
  • The park has more than 1800 archaeological sites.
  • There were over four million visitors to the park last year.

The park has not commented on a motive for the wolf's killing, nor have they said if they have any leads in their investigation.

There are now around 100 wolves in the park, but they prey on big-game animals, such as elk, which are popular with hunters, and they also kill cattle on grazing land outside of park boundaries.

Credit: PA

The shooting comes at a time of transition for wolves in nearby Wyoming, where a federal appeals court ruled in March that they could be removed from Endangered Species Act protection.

Environmentalists had persuaded a judge to put wolves back on the endangered list in Wyoming in 2014. Their concerns included a shoot-on-sight provision for wolves in most of the state - something that doesn't exist in Idaho and Montana, the other two states that the park covers.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found Wyoming adequately addressed those concerns and wolves were taken off the endangered list on April 25. This meant they could be shot on sight in the American state.

However, the wolf was some 70 miles from where it could have been legally killed. It died roughly double the age of the average lifespan of a Yellowstone wolf, and was with the same alpha male for over nine years, park officials said.

Featured Image Credit: PA