Danger may lurk in wolf ruling
Protection of animals could bring backlash
By DAN EGAN
Conservation groups were overjoyed last week when a federal judge ruled in their favor that the gray wolf should be put back on the endangered species list in most states, but one of the world’s foremost authorities on wolf biology frets that their victory might come back to bite them.
The ruling means that wildlife officials in almost every northern state, including Wisconsin, will no longer be able to kill wolves that develop a taste for livestock or otherwise become a menace. The goal in providing such protections, of course, is to pull a beleaguered species back from the brink of extinction.
But Wisconsin’s wolf population is thriving. The federal recovery goal was a combined population of 100 in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Today, there are more than 700, which biologists say is probably more than the Wisconsin and UP North Woods can support; 24 nuisance wolves were trapped and destroyed in Wisconsin last year, and wolves spilling south have already been killed on I-94 near Milwaukee, and a few have met their demise as far south as Illinois, Indiana and Missouri.
The question is no longer whether the wolf can recover. The question now is whether humans can learn to live with it, and renowned wolf biologist David Mech says the no-kill rule for problem wolves in a place such as Dairyland could actually spell trouble for the wolf everywhere. If cow-attacking wolves can’t be destroyed, he says, the bad actors could cost the entire species its tenuous public relations revival.
“I like to compare it with something like the bison,” said Mech, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Service. “We could have bison all over the place too, but they’d be running into cars and through wheat fields. With all these species, you have to have some control on their numbers.”
Conservationists blame Bush
The court case that tossed the wolf back onto the endangered species list is as much about bureaucracy as it is about biology.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has carved on the nation’s map three distinct wolf populations – a Southwestern population, a Western population and an Eastern population. The Eastern area stretches from the Dakotas to Maine and includes Wisconsin.
Recognizing the strides Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan had made in bringing back the wolf, in spring of 2003 the Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the wolf from the endangered species list in the Eastern recovery zone and designated it as threatened, one notch up the recovery ladder.
Unlike “endangered” wolves, “threatened” wolves can, in some cases, be killed for getting in the way of humans trying to make a living.
But the problem, according to conservationists, is that Fish and Wildlife’s “downlisting” order for the Eastern zone, driven by the success in the Midwest, also lifted the no-kill protections in New England states where suitable wolf habitat exists but the animal still needs every bit of help the government can offer.
Fish and Wildlife’s 2003 rule also changed the wolf’s endangered status in much of the Western recovery zone. Because of its recovery in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, the agency upgraded the wolf from endangered to threatened across the entire region.
Conservationists pounced on the 2003 ruling, arguing in court that the sweeping downlistings for the Eastern and Western zones would kill any chance for wolf recovery not only in the Northeast, but also in northern California, Oregon and elsewhere in the West.
On Monday, Federal District Judge Robert Jones sided with the 19 conservation groups that took the case to into his Portland, Ore., courtroom.
“Today’s decision shows that the Bush administration is not a true partner when it comes to species conservation, that they only want to remove species protections as quickly as possible, regardless of what the science shows,” declared Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.
DNR caught off-guard
Fish and Wildlife responded to the ruling the next day by telling Wisconsin DNR officials to stop its wolf-killing program until attorneys can sort through the legal ramifications of the ruling.
“It’s unfortunate,” says Ron Refsnider, Fish and Wildlife’s regional endangered species listing coordinator. “We felt we’d done it (the downlisting) all properly and under all the rules and regulations.”
DNR officials were caught off-guard by Tuesday’s orders to stop killing problem wolves.
In the 22 months since the wolf was moved from endangered to threatened, wildlife officials in Wisconsin have killed 41 problem animals, said Adrian Wydeven, head of the DNR’s wolf recovery program.
Before the 2003 downlisting, the only tool Wisconsin had to manage problem wolves was to trap them and release them somewhere else.
Wydeven says that is what the state will have to do now that the judge has declared the species endangered again, but he worries there are few places remaining where a transported wolf will be able to make it on its own because state forests are virtually filled with them.
In some cases, existing wolf packs in an area attack and kill a transplanted animal. In others, it’s human hostility that dooms a transplanted wolf.
Wydeven says several Wisconsin counties, including Oconto, Taylor and Lincoln, have passed rules or resolutions that prohibit the DNR from transporting wolves across their boundaries. Wydeven says counties don’t have the legal authority to ban the DNR from moving wolves, but his department gets the message nonetheless – marauding wolves are wearing out their welcome in the state.
He said that last year eight wolves were illegally shot in Wisconsin. In 2002, the last year Wisconsin could not kill problem wolves, the number of illegal killings was double that.
Nobody happy
Conservationists are thrilled with what the ruling means for wolves on a national level, but nobody is happy about what it means now for Wisconsin. Not the farmers who have to live with wolves prowling the pastures. Not the biologists who have made careers out of restoring the predator to the top of the food chain. Not even some of the organizations that liberally use the wolf’s image to stir public passions – and donations – for their conservationist agendas.
“The Great Lakes states got caught up in the national rule, and frankly got kind of held back by the fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had lumped Great Lakes states, which do have healthy wolf populations, together with the Northeast, which does not have any wolves,” said Nina Fascione, a vice president for Defenders of Wildlife. “Wisconsin has done a good job, and I’d be supportive of Wisconsin being able to play a greater role in management of the state’s wolves, but that won’t happen now.”
The timing of the ruling is particularly stinging to Wisconsin biologists, because this was the year when three decades of recovery efforts were finally supposed to pay off with the wolf being removed altogether from the federal threatened and endangered lists and its management turned over entirely to the state.
The species was first listed as endangered in 1974, the year after passage of the Endangered Species Act. The crux of the federal plan to bring the king of the carnivores back to the deer-rich state forests was remarkably simple: Do nothing.
Doing nothing meant, most importantly, not killing wolves that roamed over from Minnesota, which, unlike Wisconsin, never completely lost its wolf population in aggressive hunts in the previous century. Minnesota’s wolves, which have been listed as threatened since 1978, were not affected by last week’s ruling.
In 1973, Wisconsin had zero wolves. It had 25 by 1980, and 248 by 2000. Today, there are more than 370 wolves roaming the state and a similar number in the Upper Peninsula.
The relatively smooth natural recovery in this region occurred in stark contrast to controversy it sparked in the Western states, where wolves were plucked from Canada and transplanted into the wilds of central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in an exercise many perceived as more about federal muscle-flexing than wildlife biology.
“What separates the northern Great Lakes from many other places is that wolves walked back here – we didn’t reintroduce them,” says Pam Troxell, of Ashland’s Timber Wolf Alliance. “There really was no human control, except protection.”
Trouble ahead?
Some fear the judge’s ruling has endangered Wisconsin’s wolf population – not just legally, but literally.
“Because the wolf is a top predator, it is a very controversial species and when it causes damage, which it does, it engenders very strong feelings,” says Signe Holtz, director of the DNR’s endangered resources bureau. “As a result, we in the DNR feel very strongly that we want to be able to manage those conflicts between humans and wolves, and by managing them I believe we build more support for having wolves as part of the natural world in Wisconsin.”
Representatives of the farming industry see problems ahead.
“I don’t think this is going to help wolf recovery,” Eric Koens, board member for the Wisconsin Cattlemen’s Association. “It’s going to harm recovery because it’s going to create so much animosity.”
“There is going to be a greater burden on Wisconsin,” acknowledges conservationist Fascione.
Fascione said the solution is for Fish and Wildlife to designate Upper Great Lakes wolves as a distinct population. That, she explained, could reopen the door to killing problem wolves in this region, without relaxing protection measures in Northeastern states.
But federal bureaucracies are as lumbering as wolves are nimble, and some predict the fur will be flying soon if something isn’t done.
“There is going to be more illegal action in taking wolves,” predicted Koens. “I don’t think that would be a surprise to anybody.”
Biologist Mech looks at the big picture, and he doesn’t like what he sees, not just for wolves in Wisconsin, but for wildlife recovery efforts across the country.
“I worry about backlashes, in terms of Congress,” said Mech. “Will this make Congress more apt to want to modify the Endangered Species Act?”