Howling Over Federal Plan to Expand Wolf Killing
By Andrew C. Revkin
The gray wolf has been trying to reclaim its place as alpha predator in parts of Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone Region ever since 65 members of this endangered species were reintroduced in the 1990s. The wolves are doing too good a job, perhaps.
Under pressure from another alpha predator, human hunters (along with state officials eager to keep hunters happy), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has changed a rule in a way that has wildlife campaigners howling.
The complaints are not about the section allowing someone to kill a wolf attacking, say, a dog or livestock. It’s the part about states and tribal governments having the right to allow greatly expanded killing of wolves in “non-essential” populations where local officials determine that wolf packs are taking too big a share of deer and elk herds also coveted by hunters.
In a news release, the Fish and Wildlife Service said the states needed more flexibility to allow them to “manage” and “remove” wolves (euphemisms for shooting them) where their predatory skills are too effective.
“The states have done an excellent job managing wolves, and this revision will provide the extra flexibility they may need to manage wolves for some time in the future,” said Jay Slack, acting regional director for the service’s Mountain-Prairie Region, in the release.
The Sierra Club complained bitterly today in its own release, estimating that the action could result in the killing of all but 600 of the approximately 1,500 wolves in the region.
“If we call open season on wolves now, we could soon find ourselves back at the starting line. It’s a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Sierra Club representative Melanie Stein. “Deer and elk populations are thriving in this region. There’s absolutely no reason to begin slaughtering wolves, other than to please a handful of special interests. This is another example of politics trumping science in the Bush administration. Federal and state agencies are tripping over each other, and our wildlife are suffering as a result.”
Local governments have been pressing for the change for awhile, and in the rural West, the right of humans to dominate nature is as deep-rooted as the laws of physics. Kirk Johnson of The Times filed a fine piece on wolves and the changing West earlier this month.
As human populations expand, there’ll be ever more such clashes between human interests and those of wide-ranging wildlife, whether in the Serengeti or Wyoming.