An invisible line snakes west from Bondurant, Wyo., following the highway through Hoback, Jackson, across Teton Pass and out to Idaho.
North and east of the line, Wyoming considers wolves trophies. They can be hunted, but only in certain numbers, and only at certain times of the year.
But south and west of the invisible line in Teton County, it’s open season on wolves from March to October. There, the large carnivores are considered predators. In the Equality State, that means they can be killed in almost any manner, and without limit. It also means that, as predators, wolves that roam from South Park to the Snake River Canyon lack protection from animal cruelty — at least in the eyes of the state.
“Why have we determined that animals can be treated in a different manner depending on the ZIP code they’re in?” said Kristin Combs, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates. “Especially when it comes to torture, torment and cruelty. That should just not be OK anywhere.”
For the past week, wildlife advocates, state officials and organizations have been reeling after images of a Wyoming man with a wolf muzzled by red duct tape went viral.
Cody Roberts, the man accused of tormenting the animal, allegedly first ran the animal over with his snowmobile and, rather than killing it, disabled it, and brought the wolf inside the Green River Bar before killing it out back, per Cowboy State Daily’s reporting.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has not confirmed those allegations, but filed misdemeanor charges against Roberts, Wyofile reported. Jackson Hole Community Radio broke the story, but Cowboy State Daily tracked down the photo, setting off a firestorm about Roberts and the state’s wolf policy.
Ranchers and hunters have agreed that what he did was poor form, and the speaker of the Wyoming House has both condemned the killing and those making death threats against Roberts. National animal welfare groups are arguing that Roberts should be prosecuted under state animal cruelty laws, which they say do apply, and joined with local wildlife advocates to circulate a petition, now with 5,500 signatures, calling for Roberts to face a harsher punishment. Even Gov. Mark Gordon piled on in a Monday statement.
“I want to make my position on this absolutely clear,” Gordon said. “Cruelty to any wildlife is absolutely unacceptable. This is not the way anyone should treat any animal. I am outraged by this incident, just like thousands of Wyoming ranchers, farmers, sportsmen and sportswomen, and others around the state.”
But disagreement has crept into the conversation amid calls for reform.
While prominent wildlife advocates want to see, at a minimum, animal cruelty laws applied to all wild animals, regardless of whether they’re considered predators, a Sublette County attorney says those protections might already exist in a different legal interpretation of state law. Ranchers, however, say that applying animal cruelty statues universally would likely be a slippery slope that could threaten their livelihoods. Meanwhile, other conservation groups say reforms could happen elsewhere in state code.
Still, a former official who has defended Wyoming’s wolf policy acknowledged that Roberts’ behavior, and the light penalty the Game and Fish saddled him with, shows a need for reform.
“I don’t think anybody wants to see this happen again. It’s a bad look,” said David Willms, who advised former Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead on wolves and the Endangered Species Act. Willms is now an associate vice president with the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s bad for the kind of wildlife impacted by it.
“This sort of behavior shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Willms said.
As it stands, wolves cannot be hunted in Yellowstone or Grand Teton National Park. But Wyoming considers wolves “trophy game” in areas surrounding the park, and “predators” in the remaining 85% of the state, a designation that means that people can legally kill an unlimited number of the canines. There are only a few restrictions: People must follow specific trapping regulations and are not allowed to shoot wolves from vehicles, not allowed to use automatic weapons, and not allowed to shoot animals while intoxicated.
The incident also highlighted the state’s interpretation of animal cruelty laws, which were probed in 2017 when neighbors accused a Jackson Hole outfitter of mistreating a horse. In Roberts’ case, Game and Fish said animal cruelty statutes don’t apply because the wolf was a predator. Daniel is squarely within the state’s predator zone.
Until Wednesday, when Game and Fish released an investigation report and videos of the incident, the department kept information about the case secret and only fined Roberts $250 for possessing a live wolf, which he paid.
Wildlife advocates have long opposed Wyoming’s so-called “dual classification” system and protections for people who kill predators, which they say create an environment that makes the current incident possible.
“At every step of the way, the state of Wyoming has been very careful to ensure there would be no type of accountability for even this sort of outrageous conduct,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, which sued to reestablish wolves’ Endangered Species Act protections Tuesday.
They also question the policy’s consistency.
In Teton County, for example, had Roberts brought the wolf to The Stagecoach, a bar on the north side of Highway 22 in Wilson, he would’ve been within the “trophy game” area and may have been subject to stiffer penalties. In 2019, a Jackson Hole outfitter was fined $5,000 for illegally killing a wolf in Grand Teton National Park, lost his wolf hunting privileges for a year and earned a year of probation.
But had Roberts brought the wolf to The Bird, a bar on the east side of Highway 89 near the Rafter J subdivision, he would have been within a predator zone with the same regulations as Daniel.
“It’s very arbitrary, and it’s very unfortunate,” said Franz Camenzind, a former executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance who fought the dual-classification system in the early 2000s.
Combs, of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, wants to see animal cruelty statutes applied unilaterally.
“That is the change that needs to happen,” Combs said.
Combs said that her organizations’ lawyers currently believe state statute extends that protection to predators, and Sublette County Attorney Clayton M. Melinkovich has indicated there may be an opening in existing law. Sublette County announced Wednesday that it is investigating the incident.
“We’re investigating,” Melinkovich said. “And once we have facts, we’ll make a decision.”
For people like rancher Jim Magagna, the executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the incident and policy are distinct. One should not inform the other, Magagna said.
“The incident that took place in Sublette County is indefensible and totally inappropriate. It isn’t a reflection on how we as ranchers deal with predators. It isn’t reflective of common care for animals of any type,” Magagna said. “Someone who might do something like that, it’s not because having [wolves] as a predator justifies that type of behavior. It’s wrong whether they’re predators, or a protected species.”
Magagna said Roberts’ actions were just that — his own actions. He doesn’t want that to reflect on the state as a whole, and worries about proposals to apply animal cruelty statutes across the board. While Magagna said he’s absolutely opposed to people running down and killing predators with snowmobiles, which is 100% legal, he worries that expanding animal cruelty statutes could jeopardize trapping.
That’s “a necessary tool for dealing with predators, animals threatening livestock,” Magagna said. “This is something where our fundamentals as basic principles as human beings ought to govern. What this gentleman did was so inappropriate that you don’t prevent it by passing laws.
“You prevent it by emphasizing humane treatment of animals,” he added.
Willms, the Mead policy advisor turned conservation advocate, said that he’s not sure that tweaking animal cruelty laws is necessary. Instead, Willms said that changes need to be made not to the predator zone itself, but rather to the state’s system of regulating what can and can’t be done to predators.
“This type of behavior in taking predators — it can’t happen,” Willms said. “It was morally wrong. It was ethically wrong. It should be legally wrong.”
