Daily BrewCouple admits to wolf pelt smuggling attempt into Canada
Smuggling 101: If you're going to try to mail an illegal wolf pelt over the Canadian border, it helps to wait until the pelt stops bleeding through the package.
Those basics appeared to evade a Washington state couple, who recently pleaded guilty to killing a pair of endangered grey wolves and trying to smuggle one of the hides into the country.
As The Canadian Press reports, Twisp, Wash. resident Tom White, 37, admitted to slaughtering two of the creatures — one last May and the other in December 2008.
Federal prosecutors also revealed that his wife, Erin White, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to export an endangered species.
In 2008, a woman walked into an Omak Fed Ex and tried to mail a package that she said contained a rug. An employee became suspicious when the "rug" started leaking blood, and called the police.
When an officer opened the package, he got an eyeful of freshly killed wolf hide.
The Seattle Times writes that security managed to trace video camera footage of the woman and her car to the White family residence.
A search later carried out at the Whites' two homes revealed photos of Tom White posing with a large wolf who appeared to have a damaged paw.
Wolves had all but vanished from the American West by the mid-20th century, but since the animals were reintroduced into a couple of U.S. National Parks in 1995, they've slowly started to make their way back to Washington. A single pack now resides in the state's Methow Valley, where the White family also happens to live.
Federal agents started investigating the family after a spate of suspicious wolf deaths started occurring in the area.
The Times notes that a skinned gray wolf carcass was discovered after it had been dumped at a nearby roadside with a bullet hole in it.
The pack's lone breeding female also disappeared last year, despite being fitted with a radio collar that would have changed signals had she died. No signal has ever gone off, leading state biologist to believe the collar had been destroyed by a gunshot.
An indictment of the family revealed that Tom's father, William White, emailed a relative in late 2007 — just after the pack started resettling in the area — asking if he knew someone who could set a wolf snare.
A series of additional emails over the next two years, collected by search warrant, revealed that the White patriarch bragged about hunting and killing several wolves, including the use of pesticides to poison them.
William White has also pleaded guilty alongside his son to charges of conspiracy to take an endangered species, conspiracy to transport endangered species and unlawful importation of wildlife.
He racked up the last charge by bringing an illegally hunted moose from Alberta back to his Washington ranch.
Erin White told prosecutors she was shipping the wolf pelt in question to the hunting pal who had helped her father-in-law snag the moose.
Wildlife activists appear to be happy with the charges and expressed hopes the courts make an example out of the Whites.
"People who kill wolves are flat out poachers — people with disrespect for the law and for wildlife," said Mitch Friedman of Conservation Northwest told the Seattle Times. "It's critical that we come down on them hard, and I'm glad to see that we are."
