Man Accused of Showing Off Hurt Wolf in Bar, Then Killing It

A Wyoming man who allegedly hit a wolf with a snowmobile, taped the wounded animal's mouth shut, and showed it off in a rural bar before killing it has been indicted on an animal cruelty charge by a grand jury, nearly a year and a half after the incident. Cody Roberts last year paid a $250 fine for illegal possession of wildlife but avoided more serious charges as investigators struggled to find cooperative witnesses, per the AP.

• Wyoming law gives wide leeway for people to kill wolves and other predators by a variety of means in the vast majority of the state. Even so, the 12-person grand jury found enough evidence over the past two weeks to support the charge of felony animal cruelty, Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich said in a statement Wednesday.

• Widely circulated photos showed a man identified as Roberts posing with the wolf, its mouth bound with tape, on Feb. 29, 2024, in a bar near Daniel, a town of about 150 people a little more than an hour south of Jackson. Video clips showed the same animal lying on a floor, alive but barely moving.
• The light punishment against Roberts led to calls for a Wyoming tourism boycott, to little apparent effect: Yellowstone National Park had its second-busiest year on record in 2024, up more than 5% from 2023.
• Grand juries in Wyoming are rare. The last one to get significant attention, in 2019, found that a sheriff's deputy didn't commit involuntary manslaughter by killing an unarmed man after a traffic stop.
• Government-sponsored poisoning, trapping, and bounty hunting all but wiped out wolves in the lower 48 states in the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting in the 1990s, a reintroduction program brought them back to Yellowstone and central Idaho, and their numbers have rebounded. Though wolves remain listed as a federally endangered or threatened species in most of the country, they have no such protection in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, where they can be hunted and trapped.
• Exceptions include Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Teton National Park, where hunting is prohibited and the wild canines are a major attraction for millions of tourists. In 85% percent of Wyoming, wolves are classified as predators and can be freely killed by virtually any means. The so-called predator zone includes Sublette County, where the wolf was killed.
• Groups including the Humane Society argued that Wyoming's animal cruelty law could nonetheless apply there. If convicted, Roberts faces up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.