Judge blocks automatic wolf killing
The Associated Press
BOISE — A federal judge is prohibiting federal wildlife managers
from
automatically moving or killing wolves that tangle with livestock in the
Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
While the 1972 law creating the recreation area gives wolves
precedence
over grazing, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said it must be balanced
with rules established when wolves were reintroduced in the mid-1990s.
Those rules direct the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to move and
eventually kill wolves that prey on stock.
“Neither trumps the other,” Winmill found. “Both must be examined by
the Forest Service.”
The Idaho Conservation League and the Western Watersheds Project sued
the Forest Service in 2001, when two wolves in the Whitehawk Pack were
killed for attacking stock that June.
Since then, federal wolf managers have killed the entire pack,
generating opposition from around the world.
In the past three years, 27 wolves have been killed or moved out of
the
White Cloud Peaks and the East Fork of the Salmon River in or adjacent to
the recreation area.
“We don’t think it’s in the best interest of the Forest Service,
livestock owners or wolves to repeat what happened last year,” John
McCarthy of the Idaho Conservation League said.
“We think this court ruling will encourage, if not force, the
government to act in a different way than it did last year,” McCarthy
said.
Forest Service spokesman Dan Jiron said the court order was being
reviewed.
Idaho Woolgrowers Association Director Stan Boyd, chairman of the
Idaho
Wolf Oversight Committee, called the ruling “totally wrong” and expressed
concern that it could further polarize wolf reintroduction advocates and
critics.
“When they brought the wolves in, the rules were all spelled out, and
those were the guidelines we were to follow,” he said. “There were a lot
of people in livestock who weren’t happy with that, but those were the
rules.”
Hagerman sheep rancher Bill Brailsford, whose family has summered
sheep
in the Galena Summit area for a century, told The Times-News in February
that he figured he had lost 20 sheep to wolves. The wolves also killed one
of his large guard dogs, the rancher said.
Winmill’s order requires the Forest Service to complete environmental
reviews and grazing plans for all 28 allotments in the recreation area,
where about 8,000 cattle and sheep graze.
Those reviews, he said, must consider the needs of wolves.
Some ranchers have worked with environmentalists to accommodate the
wolves by voluntarily moving their stock, but now the Forest Service could
force ranchers to move their sheep when wolves are in the area.
“The cowboys have to give up some of the unbridled management
discretion they’ve had on these federal lands,” said Laird Lucas, the
attorney who represented the environmental groups.