Interior official says wolf delisting will happen in 2003
By SCOTT McMILLION
Chronicle Staff Writer
The federal government still plans to remove protections for wolves by
next year, a Bush administration official said Wednesday, but lawsuits
over that action are inevitable.
There is a “100 percent chance” of suits aiming to retain protections
under the Endangered Species Act, according to Craig Manson, assistant
secretary of the Interior Department, a job that puts him in charge of the
National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
He said the government will be ready to delist wolves in a few months, and
it will be ready to defend that action in court.
“We’re prepared to defend that case because we think the science is on our
side,” he told the annual meeting of the Western Environmental Trade
Association, a group of extractive industry officials and politicians
gathered at the Holiday Inn in Bozeman.
“When the time is biologically right, it’s time to be relieved of the
burdens (of the ESA). We’re going to get there in 2003,” he said.
However, others maintain the government stands on fragile legal ground.
“Some of my colleagues feel (the government) is quite vulnerable,” said
Mike Phillips, head of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and a former
federal biologist who implemented wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone
National Park in 1995 and 1996.
The federal government’s initial plan calls for delisting wolves in
several Western states, from Colorado to Washington, even though most of
those states have no wolves.
It’s the wide geographic breadth of that plan that irks many
environmentalists.
That plan would kick in after a December count, when biologists expect to
confirm the presence of at least 30 breeding pairs of wolves for a third
year in a row in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. About 700 wolves now roam
those three states.
Phillips, widely respected among wolf advocates, said he would “actively
lobby” for delisting in the three states, where wolves are “doing fine,”
but not all across the West.
Currently occupied wolf habitat comprises less than 10 percent of
historically occupied wolf habitat, Phillips said, and the ESA calls for
delisting when a species occupies a “significant” portion of the historic
range.
“I don’t know who would consider 8 percent to 10 percent significant,” he
said. Still, there is a lot of pressure to delist wolves, which have
expanded their territory rapidly.
“We have your puppies running all over,” Rep. John Esp told Manson at the
meeting.
Manson, a former district judge and general counsel for the California
Department of Fish and Game, also met with the Chronicle’s editorial
board. In both appearances, he touted Bush’s natural resource agenda.
The top priority is the president’s Healthy Forests Initiative, which
calls for thinning and logging fire-prone forests while stripping down
some environmental laws.
Manson is also eager to make progress on the backlog of maintenance
projects in national parks, a project to which Bush has committed $4.9
billion.
He wants to make a dent in the onslaught of invasive plants and animals
and he wants to make the federal government, which manages hundreds of
millions of acres in the West, more accessible to local concerns.
“We want to treat the states not as colonies but as sovereigns,” he
said. And the administration will be one that “involves people who live
and work on the land.”
The canceling of a Clinton-era ban on snowmobiling in Yellowstone
“illustrates part of our philosophy,” he said, adding that the Bush
administration wants to “manage instead of prohibit” snowmobiles.
“There will be snowmobiles in Yellowstone hereafter,” he said, but they
will be “environmentally responsible.”