Gray Wolves To Lose Endangered Status; Critics Call Decision Short-Sighted
Gray wolves will be fair game for hunters in parts of the northern Rocky Mountains after federal officials announced Thursday that they would be taken off the endangered species list.
The decision, which is expected to face lengthy litigation, comes after a 20-year effort to reestablish gray wolf populations in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
“The wolves took the opportunity that Fish and Wildlife Service, the states and the tribes gave them and ran with it,” Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett said. “Wolves are back.”
The three states have started planning for the fall hunting season. Montana submitted its wolf plan the day before delisting, and Idaho and Wyoming will finalize their plans in the coming months.
Environmental groups were dismayed by the decision, calling it shortsighted and a political concession to ranching and hunting interests.
“It’s a huge step back for wolf recovery in the Rockies,” said Doug Honnold, managing attorney for the northern Rockies office of Earth Justice, an environmental group. “The sad part is that we’re approaching legitimate biological recovery, but we’re not there yet.”
Honnold said he would serve a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service next week on behalf of environmental organizations including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Gray wolves once were plentiful from central Mexico to the Arctic, but were killed off for decades, and by the 1930s had virtually disappeared from the American West. In 1974, they were listed as endangered. Since then about $27 million has been spent by the federal government to conserve the wolves.
In 1995 and 1996, officials reintroduced 66 wolves to central Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park area. The population has since surpassed the goal of a stable population of at least 300 animals, to more than 1,500 throughout the northern Rockies region. That population is increasing by about 24% annually, according to wildlife officials.
The delisting will affect Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon, and a small portion of central Utah. It will take effect March 28. Last year, gray wolves were delisted in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota after the region’s population hit about 4,000. That delisting is being litigated.
All three Rocky Mountain states were required to submit wolf management plans for a delisted population before Thursday’s announcement, and they have agreed to maintain a minimum population of about 150 wolves per state. Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife’s wolf recovery coordinator, who headed the reintroduction effort, predicted that the regional population would not fall below 900 to 1,200 wolves.
“It’s a pretty good feeling to know this final part of this recovery project is happening, and the future conservation of wolves is secure in state hands,” he said.
In Wyoming, the state Game and Fish Department will maintain at least seven breeding pairs, or half the current number, outside Yellowstone National Park, Bangs said. The term “breeding pair” refers to a successfully reproducing wolf pack; a pack usually includes about 14 animals, he said.
The Wyoming plan classifies some wolf populations as “trophy game animals,” subject to certain rules including kill limits, and others are deemed “predatory,” allowing wolves “to be taken at any time by anybody,” said Eric Keszler, a spokesman for the Game and Fish Department. This includes methods such as baiting and aerial shooting, he said.
About 724 wolves have been killed in the region since 1987 because of conflicts with livestock, Bangs said.
In Idaho, which has about 732 wolves, the plan calls for maintaining a population of about 500 to 700 animals.
“We’re not going to drop these populations down to minimum levels,” said Steve Nadeau, who oversees the wolf program for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “The state has a plan to stabilize these populations, and we realize that wolf populations are here to stay, and we’re going to do a good job at managing them,” Nadeau said. “The whole world is watching, and we know it.”
Montana officials said they probably would try to maintain the current level of about 422 wolves, allowing hunters to kill only the 24% surplus.
If the numbers fell below minimum levels for three consecutive years, relisting would be considered, Bangs said.
Some scientists say the delisting does not take into account the long-term genetic viability and sustainment of the wolf population in the Rockies.
About four years ago, a UCLA study found that the population of gray wolves in the Yellowstone area was genetically isolated and not breeding with other reintroduced populations in the northern Rockies area.
But state and wildlife officials say that the research doesn’t extend to all three states and that it makes unrealistic assumptions.
“The whole goal for listing wolves is to delist wolves, and why would you not want to do that if everything is ready to go?” Nadeau said. “It’s just a success, and it’s time to let the states . . . get on with managing wolves as they’re meant to be managed.”
© 2008 The Los Angeles Times
Men hunt, I think, maybe because they have something wrong with their own equipment, and they need something else to shoot. ~ Pamela Lee Anderson
Nature manages wolves, deer and other native inhabitants quite well, without any assistance from man.
“Management” = killing. Aerial shooting, baiting….this is truly appalling, as well as ignorant. The bureaucrats and ranchers who conspire to do these things will likely be reborn as animals in the wild west.
Very true, WTF and WALK!
Cowards kill animals. Yes, I’m all for the reverse reincarnation for these cowards to be re-born as animals who get hunted by low-lifes like themselves. I think every hunter should have to step into that story, “The Most Dangerous Game” to see what it feels like to be hunted.
So much of this is determined by the heavily subsidized livestock industry. I highly recommend George Wuerthner’s “Welfare Ranching; The subsidized destruction of the West”. This book details the ridiculous and tragic preference to livestock grazing that is causing our most endangered animals to be decimated by greedy liars. Most endangered is the Grizzly Bear, but the wolf is undoubtedly the most hated. I have seen bumper stickers on cattle people’s trucks that say a wolf kills 250 elk a year. That would mean that a pack of 14 would have to kill 3500 a year , or 9 or 10 a day. In reality they kill about one every two weeks, which means each wolf is responsible for slightly less then 2 elk a year.
In instances where livestock and wildlife clash, I favor siding with our jointly owned wildlife. Let the welfare ranchers collect their subsidies somewhere else.
As a subsistence hunter I’m appalled by what the FWS is doing here. Wolves are a keystone predator and are essential to nature’s ability to maintain balance in ecosystems. Instead of killing them off where they live now, FWS should be reintroducing wolves “from Mexico to the Arctic,” wherever greedy ranchers and paranoid townsfolk have wiped them out! I’m with glenn on this one… Wildlife over welfare ranchers!
WHAT A DISGRACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ALL THE KILLING THAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD COULD WE NOT LEAVE JUST SOME OF THE INNOCENT ALIVE. THIS NATION IS A DISGRACE
The pathetic thing is that humans kill wolves not only to subsidize the meat eating industry, but because it makes them feel as though they are great hunters–but take away the tools and humans are dead meat.
Not even the inuit would last 3 seconds on their supposedly “native” environment without tools and artifice, unlike the true natives of the north who are born with everything they need.
Humans would be lucky to kill a sparrow with their bare hands if you take away the tools.
But,
as long as humans are hunting and eating meat they will be killing each other too.
the ol La Fontaine chestnut still applies, from a Bird Shot by an Arrow
but mock us not you heartless race,
for you too will sometime take our place,
for half at least of Japhet’s brothers,
forge swords and knives to slay the others.
And the number of hunters who shoot each other each year also confirms that truth.
Humans (women too) hunt because causing the death of others is empowering. They feel alive when taking life. That’s the secret behind the gun cult too. And best of all we like to take human life: that’s really heroic, being there when the bullets fly, or so the macho boast. It isn’t civilised or christian or anything except the psychosis experienced as consciousness tries to cope with animal instincts. We’re an insane, sadistic species.
Quoting Pamela Lee Anderson? - bet her words go down as words of the wisest. Bet none of you commentors live in the areas affected; stay where you are-please! . Happy in northwest Wyoming!!!!
We can learn from how wolves socialize and support their packs(family). Most of us know they mercifully hunt only the sick, injured, old, maimed to support ALL life.
But we, in our egotistical ‘wisdom’, still send our young to battle to become ‘cannon fodder’, yet they have so much potential and have not yet lived long enough. And I am already seeing too, too many cases of human(?)parents killing their young, as if they’re entitled. “..when will WE ever learn?” And we have the ‘righteousness’ to skewer a football player and say he did wrong, while rationalizing war as ‘good’ or some other acceptable quality.
I’m very sad, too, and cry easily these days. It’s very challenging to ‘love one another’, oftentimes.
Only wolves know how to cull the week and sick thus keep Deer, Elk, Moose etc. herds genetically superior.
Some time in the future, only Man, Rats and Cockroaches will be left, and all the men will all be type A - ambitious, driven, successful. They will find no peace in nature, no singing birds, no animals, no fish….they will only have their rabid selves to keep each other company. Will man then be considered successful?
“The bureaucrats and ranchers who conspire to do these things will likely be reborn as animals in the wild west.”
The only problem with the above is, nature will also be kind to erase all memory, so what good is it?
These hunters should be let lose in the wild without any weapons except for their cunning. That’s how they will find out what it is like to hunted and killed.
“as they are meant to be managed” - what a perspective!
Was this guy a Gestapo agent in a past life?
The peculiar thing is the desire of humans to revive a species population not for the sake of the individual animals’ interests. There is nothing compassionate about it. It is all about ourselves: “biodiversity” is deemed essential, but we only do it for our sake, not for theirs. And yet with our rapacious inclination to plunder the earth and upset the natural balance, our collective and individual self-centredness seems fast to becoming our own undoing.
The culture of our global leadership structures is based on the assumption that economic growth is good. In fact, it is killing us, and we are talking about “managing” wolf populations as if that is something we should do, and as if managing ourselves is not the mammoth in the room.
no reason to hunt wolves -
and there are plenty of reasons to hunt.
such as eating, eating, and eating
oh yeah and then there’s food
hunt your dinner and let the wolves hunt theirs.
Boy, this current government is terribly prejudiced! It really gives bullies, cowards, self-serving idiots and myopic clowns an unfair advantage in all endeavors. I would love to see any of them try to survive in the wilderness. Hell, unlike the wolf — they’d return with holes in their butts and in their feet from shooting themselves. Hey, survival of the dumbest continues to get dumber and our governmnet really loves to underwrite that effort.
The wolf population is increasing rapidly now because of the abundance of prey that was created by the previous predator extermination by cattle ranchers. The agencies that pretend to manage wildlife are really in the business of managing their own job security, ensuring they keep their raison d’etre alive in the minds of their funders in Washington. This is called “tail wag dog” and Americans are almost competely clueless about the diverse negative fallout of this modus operandi in practice society-wide. If the wildlife managers had a clue they could be a potent political force in Washington pushing sensible policies such as allowing the wildlife populations to stabilize themselves naturally like they have done for many millions of years. This is most definitely the Petro-Medieval Age in America with cheap fossil fuels enabling stupidity to defy reason and assault nature. Eliminate the fossil fuels and tail stops wagging dog and the human animal becomes sharp again, wise, and respectful of nature.
Man is not long for this earth. In 10,000 years there will be no record of his passing. War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death, ride hard toward your journeys end.
If this creates more-room upon the Endangered-List, can someone Propose adding “Liberals”? I hear they can’t even be found or spotted anymore in their traditional habitat of the Democratic-Party, nor in their breeding-grounds within Massachusetts, several Ivy-laden Institutions in the East, or even throughout their formerly-broad Ranges up into Eastern&Middle-Canada and down into the Great-Lakes area.
I believe most-losses were due Predation, but many suffer from the fatal-maladies called ‘triangulation’ and ‘centristism’ — which is always progressive (but never “Progressive”).
Even the Old-Gray’s and Pack-Leaders from the Boston/Hiannisport-area are looking quite-poorly and very obviously will not survive this harsh-Winter…leaving all their-Young to fend for themselves in their newly-hostile and often-Poisoned Hunting-Territory (which, itself, is only about 10-square-miles, and now offers scant-sustenance for any of these scruffy-Liberals).
If people don’t act SOON, our children and grandchildren will never know the joy of watching these entertaining herbivores frolicking and breeding and ‘making so much noise’ during their filibustered-braying and communications — directed most-often only to others of their-kind. And, although they served no real-role in the food-chain or played any important-part in American-Commerce or Agriculture, they would be sorely ‘missed’ — by Hundreds (if not Thousands) of American Citizens.
It has been almost 20 years now since I walked with a wolf on our nations capitol grounds to help promote a bill coming before congress to re-establish the wolf into Yellowstone Park.
Now, I read or hear all the same retoric statements from 20 years ago.
Maybe the answer can only come by living with and beside the wolf? You all might learn something about devotion to family, devotion to your own kind. We have man killing man, man killing animal. The solution is very simple, “Stop doing it”. But that isn’t going to happen, is it?
Golddogs that’s a land I don’t wish to be a part of nor do I want any more children to have to grow up in and live that way!
Your scenario sort of reminds me of a old movie called “Soylent Green” where people went to movies to see what the world used to look like before mornos ruined it.
This just totally makes me ill.
“…it’s time to let the states . . . get on with managing wolves as they’re meant to be managed.”
Everyone in my home state of Montana knows that God’s purpose for wolves is to give legions of Budweiser sucking, potbellied, hydrocephalic rednecks something to shoot at. There are a dozen stuffed animal heads in every roadside greasy spoon up there in gun country. When those yokels put together their hatred of hippie environmentalists and their fear of wild animals they will rid the woods of both in a very short time.
In Soylent Green, those photos of nature and wild life was what you saw from your bed as you were being euthanized — to become Soylent Green.
Tens of thousands of people have written in in protest to Fish and Wildlife (HA!) and to their alleged representatives to fight this delisting. Unfortunately, as we all know, our alleged representatives won’t make a move until given the “go ahead” or “stop” from their corporate masters.
Wolves, coyotes and foxes main food source is rodents. They keep the rodent population down, which then helps the grazers, and the farmers. This provides more food for the grazers. The predators cull the herds. No predators, the grazers overpopulate, become diseased, etc. Predators tend to self limit when their food supply diminishes.
We, on the other hand, “manage” wildlife. We shoot trap or poison the predators, then poison the rodents, which kills the scavenger birds and animals that feed on them, then we kill the grazers.
In Alaska, rich men hire helicopters to run wolves to exhaustion. They then shoot them with high powered rifles, land and have their pictures taken with their kill.
In the days of the Raj, a comfortable blind was built in a tree. A goat was tethered a short way away and cut slightly. Its bleating attracted a tiger. When the tiger approached the goat, BOOM! After they were sure it was dead, the intrepid hunter climbed down from the tree and later bragged of his hunting prowess, displaying the skin.
Nothing much changes except the weapons are more powerful and nothing can escape from infrared scopes and automatic weapons. What should we expect in the land of the Bush and the Corporate State?
A.J. Feb 23 2008
The main underlying problem to begin with is the continual loss of all wildlife habitat and population encroachment.Humans are all consuming,excessive and greedy creatures by nature.We breed like our close relatives the common rat and cockroach…and together will eventually eat up and destroy the earth.If you have payed any attention thru the years the politicians,big business,and wealthy outspoken entertainers are the worst offenders and biggest hypocrits when it comes to wildlife and the environment. All wildlife in this day and age has to be managed period!Hunting and fishing has paid for most of all the dollars combined vs the treehuggers when it comes to funding the long term survival of many species;including those that are not hunted.State and Federally managed wildlife programs have worked effectively thru the years;such as with the deer,turkey,geese,elk,antelope and even with predators like the cougar and coyote.Lets be realistic.An ideal scenario to let Nature manage her own is a beautiful but naive notion at best.So please PamLeeAnderson and others like you, put on a condom and slow down your gucci laced ferrari when you drive through a Montana wilderness.
Glenn goodman, have you really seen bumper stickers that say a wolf kills 250 elk a year? If so, that’s nuts.
Let’s see, an elk weighs about 700 lbs (some more and some less), with maybe 2/3 of that being edible tissue. Okay, so let’s say you can get 400 lbs of meat out of an elk. A wolf weighs about 100 lbs. Okay, divide 250 into 365 and you get 1.46. 400 divided by 1.46 equals about 270. So that means a 100-lb wolf would eat nearly three times its weight every day in elk meat and tissue. Okay. Sure. Wouldn’t be long before the wolf would be so fat it could barely move.
Mr. goodman, I’m not doubting you, but this is kind of amazing. I mean, if folks want to rationalize up a reason to make hunting wolves a good thing, can’t they come up with something a little more plausible than that?
I really did see that bumper sticker on two pickups with Montana plates driving in northern California. It really is amazing for reasons that I gave and you went even further with, but I know that is the sort of ignorance driving these kill the wolves campaigns. The final argument against that sort of non-thinking is that the elk or moose or other game animal that the wolves kill is not the sort of elk that would interest a hunter. They pretty much never take bull elk in their prime. They take the weak and the sick and old or young ones that don’t make the cut. This keeps the herd healthy and is a service that helps hunters and can’t really be replaced by hunters. Who would want to go hunting if the rules were to only shoot sick or decrepit elk?
Shooting an innocent and if left alone harmless animal that is plays a vital role in the ecosystem is for weak, overcompensating men who deserve to be gunned down, poisined and trapped, just so they can feel what it is like.
Who would want a severed head, skin or any other animal product lying around the house anyway.
Sick b*st*rds who would participate in such a brutal culling of endangered animals
Solution:
Set aside large continuous regions around the country to be left alone as wild and let nature manage it. The Gila and A-S region in the SW would be a great place for re-establishing a wolf population. Get the stupid cows out of there, except for Corrente Cattle, cows do nothing to defend their young!
If I was an old elk, I believe I would rather go down fighting than suffering and starving only to freeze to death.
Yellowstone has shown that wolves do benefit the health of elk herds. Duh! Much evidence exists showing that nature fixes itself in it’s own way. If we let it! Un-enlightened people only see to things in the span of a lifetime and think they are God!
There is only one God, and you can’t see him because God is the planet and the heavens above and beyond to the many universes beyond our own. God is time and space and the order of which we are all bound. We should be learning the order of things as the Native Americans and other great indigenous peoples have.
This planet in its natural state and my quest for the truth is the best window I have into who the “God” everybody speaks of is.
When the Christian God (Bible) said I will have no other gods before me; the Christian religion took it as they should destroy the earth!
In Republican Alaska the previous GOP governor Murkowski opened up aerial hunting of wolves.
It must make them feel powerful and superior to shoot defenseless animals from the safety of planes. What a bunch of cowards. They also get several hundred dollars for a wolf pelt.
Wolves and other animals were put here to provide balance in nature. Why do right-wingers love to kill??
I personally love the wild sound of nature of the wolf call. That and the call of loons are my favorites.
Very sad report.
I`m from the UK. There was once wolves and bears in
the UK hundreds of years ago, but unfortunately they
are all gone now due to humans activties Unless the killing is stopped,
the US will unfortunately join the UK in that crazy club. But
the killing probably won`t be stopped, and only once
the wolves are gone or nearly gone will they realise
what they have done. It`s human nature.
Farmers don`t care about the environment, they only
care about making money, and the hunters certainly
don`t care about the wolves or the environment.
Here`s one of my favourite quotes.
Only when the last tree has died and the last river
been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we
realise we cannot eat money. ~Cree Indian Proverb
Here’s one of my favorites, gazza:
“The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.”
— Aldo Leopold
The majority of the ranchers are leasing their land from the government at rates set in the 1860’s. I do have some sympathy for their losses. I could be wrong,but I think they are partially subsidised for their losses from the government. The wolves are a plus for the environment, the reason there are too many coyotes today is that wolves were once their primary predators.It’s all a matter of balance.
Please fight this, you Americans out there. Call your elected representatives and tell them this is a short-sighted, asinine and unpopular move. I’ve read that MOST Americans do not support this, so let them know. Aeriel gunning is especially repulsive to most sensible people.
I know there are some ranchers out there who think this is great; they have lost sight of the bigger picture and are falling for the propaganda that says this will solve their problems. It won’t. Wolves take out the weak and the sick. There was a good balance before we tipped the scales entirely in our own favour.
Please, please fight this. A war on nature will only make things worse.
OldBadgertoo, if some people feel alive when taking life, they must be related to vampires. Creepy people. That also goes for the macho guys who choose war over diplomacy and peace.
In Republican Alaska, some species of fish are disappearing from rivers and streams due to over-fishing. You think they’d do something about it, but no; money is all they care about.