State investigators can’t find evidence of a collision

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Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say they have dropped their investigation of an outspoken conservationist who claimed to have hit two wolves with his vehicle in an attempt to save an elk calf.

Toby Bridges, of Missoula, who runs a pro-wolf control Web site called Lobo Watch and sends op-ed pieces to media nearly every week, said he was driving on I-90 near the Idaho-Montana border when the incident occurred.

A military veteran who says he served with the Marines from 1969-1972 as a journalist and photographer and with a Presidential security team, Bridges advocates killing wolves because they threaten big game.

“Two wolves out of the equation ... and it was all an accident,” he wrote in a Sept. 16 Facebook post. “I love it when things go good.”

Bridges posted four photos on his Lobo Watch Facebook page. Three showed a gray wolf lying on the shoulder of a road in front of his van.

FWP officials initially said Bridges may have broken the law by intentionally running down wild animals with his van.

“We’re trying to determine, first of all, what exactly we can do with something somebody says on Facebook with no other physical evidence,” FWP Capt. Joseph Jaquith said at the time. “It’s very unsporting, regardless of how you feel about wolves or lawful means for harvest of wolves. Certainly running them down on the highway is not what we would accept.”

Bridges responded to the FWP investigation with an op-ed column in which he accused the media of practicing “blue journalism” and stating that nowhere in his Facebook post did he say he intended to run over a wolf.

“I said I intended to ‘save that calf’ from two adult wolves, which were running the cow and calf up the westbound lanes of I-90,” Bridges said. “How was I going to do that?”

FWP officials announced Oct. 3 that they were dropping their investigation of Bridges. They said the carcass found at the site was too decomposed to have died at the time Bridges said he struck the wolf, there was no evidence of a collision on the highway or on Bridges’ van, and officials were unable to find signs of a second wolf that Bridges claimed to have hit and injured.