Holes seen in Wyoming wolf plan
By MIKE STARK
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
PRAY — Wyoming legislators may have passed a new law to manage wolves, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work, a Game and Fish biologist said Wednesday.
Dave Moody, the department’s large-predator coordinator, said a bill approved earlier this year intended to meet Wyoming’s obligation to manage wolves in the future may not do enough to ensure a viable wolf population in the state — a guarantee that the federal government needs before removing the animal from the Endangered Species List.
“It’s extremely problematic,” Moody told an audience at the 15th annual North American Interagency Wolf Conference being held this week at Chico Hot Springs.
Moody has sent a letter to Wyoming’s attorney general asking how much legal latitude Game and Fish officials have in tweaking the new law into something that’s workable.
“We’re going to try to right this ship if we can,” Moody said.
Particularly troublesome, he said, is a provision in the bill that limits wolves classified as “trophy game” to a few wilderness areas adjacent to national parks in the northwest corner of the state. Those areas are too small and are not frequented enough by wolves, he said.
“Those are used (by wolves) about 11 percent of the time each year,” Moody said later.
When wolves wander out of the national parks or the wilderness areas, they will be considered predators and subject to unregulated killing.
“That does not provide long-term, adequate protection,” Moody said.
If and when wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains are taken off the Endangered Species List, management will be passed from the federal government to state agencies in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
Each has to have a plan showing that wolf populations under its supervision will be self-sustaining and viable in order to keep the species from being returned to the endangered list.
Idaho has approved a plan and Montana is circulating a proposal for public comment. Most eyes have been on Wyoming because it has been the last to develop a formal plan and has put out the most controversial proposal.
In order to meet a guideline of about 15 wolf packs per state, Wyoming lawmakers earlier this year passed a bill that guarantees at least seven wolf packs outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Inside the parks, eight packs would be needed so the state can meet its 15-pack requirement.
If the number of wolf packs outside the parks dips below seven, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission can classify more wolves as trophy game, subject to hunting regulations.
Moody said the law is “cumbersome” for a number of reasons, including trying to monitor how many wolves classified as predators are killed and knowing exactly how many wolves are in the state so management can be adjusted.
“We’re going to be constantly hovering around that (seven pack) threshold with no ability to control take,” Moody said. “We don’t have enough people and money to know when we have to flip the switch.”
Wolf management would be a “roller coaster” under the new law because wildlife managers would constantly be switching the wolves’ status from predators to trophy game and back again as the population fluctuates, Moody said.
“It’s going to be a very expensive program,” he said.
He’s hoping to hear back from the attorney general soon so the Game and Fish Department can get a viable plan to the Game and Fish Commission by June or July.
If the new law can’t be adjusted, state officials may have to return to the Legislature for another version. Lawmakers don’t meet again until early 2004, which could delay delisting of the wolves even further for all three states.
“At this point,” Moody said, “I’m not real optimistic.”
Meanwhile, a few wolves from the Northern Rockies continue to venture into Utah, Oregon and Washington.
Nancy Weiss of the Defenders of Wildlife offices in Ashland, Ore., told members of the conference on Wednesday that people in both Oregon and Washington are polarized about whether wolves should be allowed to thrive within their borders.
Both states were historically home to wolves, Weiss said. There have been a few unconfirmed wolf sightings in California recently and at least three confirmed wolves in Oregon.
Lawmakers in Oregon and Washington have proposed bills against wolf restoration and, more generally, opposing parts of the Endangered Species Act. Defenders of Wildlife and other environmental groups are pushing for wolf recovery in those states.
Weiss said there’s no doubt that wolves will continue to move into their old territories and that will set the stage for how people respond.
“I think the wolves are going to tell us what happens next,” she said.
There is also a movement afoot to get wolves into the southern reaches of the Rocky Mountains, including southern Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, said Mike Phillips of the Turner Endangered Species Fund.
“It’s a region that could easily sustain a viable population of gray wolves of about 1,000 individuals,” he said.
The stretch of land includes 25 million acres of public land and plenty of wild prey, he said. Opinion polling in those areas also has shown that a majority of respondents approved wolf restoration.
Phillips said the move could provide a “meta-population” of wolves stretching from the Arctic to Mexico.
“Nowhere else in the world does such an opportunity exist to effect large carnivore restoration over an area of continental proportions,” he said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently said that the wolf population in the Southwest isn’t yet recovered, unlike wolves in the Northern Rockies.
Phillips said the public needs to prod the federal government to consider creating a viable wolf plan in the Southwest, which might include a combination of Mexican and gray wolves.