By Tom McGhee
The Denver Post
A federal appeals court sided with Rocky Mountain National Park in a dispute with environmentalists who said that wolves should be reintroduced to control the elk population rather than leaving the task to volunteer marksmen.
Using the trained volunteers to help Park Service employees shoot and kill excess elk doesn’t violate a hunting ban in national parks, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday.
In ruling on the suit brought by WildEarth Guardians, the court said rules governing hunting in the parks allow the killing of animals that are dangerous to humans or detrimental to the park. “Neither …. the hunting ban nor the exceptions to that ban are based on the identity of the party destroying the animal …. Nor does WildEarth satisfactorily explain why, if NPS personnel can shoot an elk without it being considered hunting, the NPS’s agents cannot do so,” the court said.
WildEarth Guardians carnivore protection program director Wendy Keefover said wolves naturally target sick and injured prey, rather than the healthy animals likely to be brought down by people who can’t easily identify ailing animals.
“All the court had to do was tell the park to at least consider the alternative,” she said. “Now we have this horrible precedent allowing hunting in the parks for the first time. Instead of wolves, we are going to have fences and sharpshooters.”
The Park Service argued that reintroducing wolves wasn’t feasible, citing a lack of support from other agencies, safety concerns of nearby populations and the possibility of conflicts between wolves and people.
WildEarth Guardians sued in 2008, after the Park Service released a plan to send marksmen into the park to cull an elk herd that was destroying the aspen and willow. That year, 33 elk were killed. In 2009, 40 were culled and 50 in 2010.
A District Court judge upheld the policy in 2011 and the group appealed.
In 2010, wildlife managers estimated there were about 2,350 elk ranging through Rocky Mountain National Park east toward Loveland, including a resident herd of about 1,700 in Estes Park.