A motion-triggered camera captures members of the Profanity Peak Pack in northeastern Washington in June 2017.
A lawsuit filed this week by the Center for Biological Diversity against the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife accuses the agency of refusing to fully release public records on wolf deaths in the state.
The suit was filed in Thurston County Superior Court Tuesday.
“The public has every right to know how and why wolves are being killed in Washington,” said Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf advocate for the Center. “Wolves are still in a fragile state in Washington. It’s frustrating that state wildlife officials won’t come clean with the full details on these lethal operations.”
According to a news release from the group, the WDFW reported a wolf killed June 30 by a ranch hand was caught attacking livestock and that the killing complied with state law.
The Center made a public records request on the incident.
“(T)he department has so far refused to release documents related to the killing or subsequent investigation,” according to the Center. “This refusal is particularly troubling because last Friday the agency announced that another wolf was killed on Oct. 27, again allegedly while caught in the act of attacking livestock.”
The group has also accused WDFW of failing to release records related to the 2016 killing of the Profanity Peak wolf pack.
“Each gray wolf killed in Washington makes state wildlife officials’ lack of transparency all the more troubling,” Weiss said in a statement. “The killing of wolves should never be taken lightly, but particularly not while they remain an endangered species in Washington.”
The Center and a co-plaintiff have another pending lawsuit against the WDFW for the killing of a Sherman pack wolf in August.
“It’s unacceptable for a state agency charged with managing the public’s endangered wolves to stonewall and refuse to release records on the killing of those wolves,” Weiss said. “The agency can’t hide pertinent information by conducting a cursory search when records are requested. The department says it wants to be transparent, but that’s clearly not the case.”
