Deborah Zabarenko, PlanetArk 22 Feb 08;
WASHINGTON - Gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, listed as endangered for more than three decades, no longer need protection under the Endangered Species Act, the US government said on Thursday.
Environmental groups disagreed, saying the species has not fully recovered and vowed to sue to continue to protect wolves from hunting and other methods of killing that the groups said would likely follow the government's move.
"The wolf population in the Northern Rockies has far exceeded its recovery goal and continues to expand its size and range," Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett said in a statement announcing the decision to remove this group of grey wolves from the list of wildlife protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Once plentiful across the 48 contiguous US states, grey wolves were eradicated from the northern Rocky Mountain region and southwestern Canada by the 1930s. The species was listed as endangered in 1973; 66 wolves were re-introduced to the area in 1995.
There are now 1,513 wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, including 107 breeding pairs, according to Edward Bangs, western wolf recovery coordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The wolf population in these states has been growing 24 percent each year since they were re-introduced, Bangs said by telephone.
HUNTING AND TRAPPING
The minimum goal for recovery for grey wolves in the northern Rockies was 30 breeding pairs and a minimum of 300 individual wolves for at least three consecutive years. This goal was reached in 2002, the Interior Department said.
"Three hundred animals is not enough for the wolves to survive in the long run," said the council's Louisa Willcox. "Far more wolves are needed before the species can be considered truly recovered."
Once federal protections are removed, state management plans will go into effect, the department said in a statement.
The environmental group Natural Resources Defence Council called the delisting of these wolves premature and said the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have stated they plan to allow hunting, trapping and other killing of wolves under their state management plans.
In a statement, the group said the recovery goal should be at least 2,500 to 5,000 wolves across the three states.
The Sierra Club's Melanie Stern criticized the government's decision, saying, "We still have a long way to go before wolf populations are sustainable over the long term."
Bangs disputed this, noting that one reason grey wolf populations have grown in this area is due to effective state management of deer, elk and moose, which are prey for wolves.
"The bottom line is, wolves are just an amazing animal and there's really, really good habitat," Bangs said. "The big fear is that somehow all the success is just going to be squandered by the states, and we know that's not true."
(Editing by Sandra Maler)
Wolves to be removed from species list
Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer Yahoo News 22 Feb 08;
Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies will be removed from the endangered species list, following a 13-year restoration effort that helped the animal's population soar, federal officials said Thursday.
An estimated 1,500 wolves now roam Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. That represents a dramatic turnaround for a predator that was largely exterminated in the U.S. outside of Alaska in the early 20th century.
"Gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains are thriving and no longer require the protection of the Endangered Species Act," said Interior Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett. "The wolf's recovery in the Northern Rocky Mountains is a conservation success story."
The restoration effort, however, has been unpopular with ranchers and many others in the three states since it began in the mid-1990s, and today some state leaders want the population thinned significantly.
The states could allow hunters to target the animals as soon as this fall. That angers environmental groups, which plan to sue over the delisting and say it's too soon to remove federal protection.
"The enduring hostility to wolves still exists," said Earthjustice attorney Doug Honnold, who is preparing the lawsuit. "We're going to have hundreds of wolves killed under state management. It's a sad day for our wolves."
Plans submitted by Idaho, Montana and Wyoming indicate the states will likely maintain between 900 and 1,250 wolves for the foreseeable future, federal officials said.
Wolves have increasingly preyed on livestock as they expanded into new territories. At the same time, ranchers and wildlife agents have made more wolf kills, which are allowed under the Endangered Species Act in response to livestock conflicts.
Since the late 1980s, 724 wolves have been killed legally, and roughly the same number are estimated to have been killed illegally by poachers. Despite that, the overall population has continued to grow at the rate of 24 percent a year.
"We've been managing wolves pretty aggressively for livestock problems, but there are still a ton of wolves over a big area," said Ed Bangs, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who led the wolf recovery effort.
The wolf was nearly wiped out in the West through a government eradication program in the 1930s that included widespread poisoning of wolves. In the late 1980s the wolf had just 200 square miles of territory around Glacier National Park, in Montana near the Canadian border.
Wolves were listed as endangered in 1974, and the government has spent more than $27 million on recovery efforts in the Northern Rockies.
Since an initial 66 wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s, their population has grown rapidly. The wolf's territory now covers an estimated 113,000 square miles, Bangs said.
Public hunting could significantly decrease the size of the wolf's range. It could also reduce the chance of wolves spreading to neighboring states such as Utah, Colorado, Oregon and Washington.
However, an independent wolf biologist said he would be "shocked" if the animal again ends up on the endangered list.
"The last thing any of the states want is for wolves to be re-listed by the federal government," said Daniel Pletscher, director of the University of Montana's wildlife biology program. He added that tolerance of wolves has grown immensely since the species was nearly wiped out.
