Group aims to protect wolves
Fewer regulations may harm migrating animals
By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO – Wolves haven’t been seen in California, the nation’s most
populous state, since the last one was killed in Lassen County, stuffed
and shipped to a museum in 1924.
But a new coalition is forming to fight an anticipated reduction in
federal protections for wolves that could migrate back into California,
Nevada, Oregon and Washington from a population reintroduced in northern
Idaho.
One of the coalition’s lead groups, Defenders of Wildlife, already sparked
regional tumult in northern California and southern Oregon when it
petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year to designate the
border area as prime wolf habitat for up to 500 wolves, and to study
whether wolves should be reintroduced there.
There are no reintroduction plans, said federal and California wildlife
service officials, but natural migration will likely eventually occur.
Possible wolf sightings have been steadily increasing in Oregon since
1998, according to federal figures. Most of the sightings have been in
remote eastern Oregon.
Wolves also have periodically been spotted in Washington’s northern
Cascades, possible immigrants from Canada.
Now, environmentalists and scientists fear federal protections could be
ended for migrating wolves even before they have established breeding
populations.
Currently, wolves are protected as an endangered species throughout the
lower 48 states, except in Minnesota, where they are listed as threatened.
“If those protections are removed, then any wolf that migrated in could be
shot or otherwise disposed of,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
spokeswoman Patricia Foulk. “It would be open season.”
The revision of the service’s July 2000 proposal could remove the wolf
from the endangered or threatened list in much of the nation where wolves
don’t now exist, and downgrade its status from “endangered” to
“threatened” in regions surrounding Minnesota, northern Idaho and
Yellowstone National Park where breeding populations have been
established, Foulk said.
That would effectively halt wolf migrations and reintroductions with the
species reoccupying just 4 percent of its historic range with 4 percent of
its historic population, critics say.
“Our understanding is they’re going to come out with a revised plan that’s
even worse,” despite two years of negotiations, said Nancy Weiss,
Defenders of Wildlife’s western director of species conservation.
However, “I think evidence has shown where they have been reintroduced,
they do very well – too well, to the point where they cause problems,”
said Jack King, national affairs manager of the California Farm Bureau
Federation.