Making a case for wolves
Associated Press
MONTPELIER, Vt. — The National Wildlife Federation and three other environmental groups plan to sue the federal government for ending a program to restore wolves to the Northeast. The groups argue that by changing the classification of wolves from endangered to threatened, and ending restoration efforts, the Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act.
“Today, the wolf can be found on just 3 percent of its historic range in the lower 48 states, and millions of acres of former habitat remain potentially available for wolf restoration,” the groups said in a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, giving her 60 days notice that a lawsuit would be filed.
The groups want the federal government to change its rules again, reviewing the proper classification under the Endangered Species Act for wolves in the Northeast, and reviving restoration efforts.
“They should go back and draw up a plan for figuring out how to restore the wolf to the Northeast,” said federation attorney John Kostyack from Washington. “We know it’s possible. We had great success in the West.”
On April 1, the Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified most wolf populations in the United States from endangered, the most imperiled, to threatened. The move came after what officials felt was a successful reintroduction program in Yellowstone National Park. Wolves naturally repopulated parts of the upper Great Lakes from previously existing populations in Minnesota.
It was the success of those programs in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, where wolf populations are now thriving, that led to the rule change in April.
Paul Nickerson, an endangered species specialist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife office in Haley, Mass., said the goals of the Endangered Species Act had been met: the creation of a self-sustaining wolf population in the wild.
“I personally would love to see wolves reinhabit the (Northeast) region,” said Nickerson, who had not seen the National Wildlife Federation’s document, but was familiar with the arguments. “It’s not a requirement of the Endangered Species Act that every inch of habitat be reinhabited.”
The Wildlife Federation, The Maine Wolf Coalition, the Vermont Natural Resources Council and Environmental Advocates of New York on Thursday sent the 60-day notice to Norton. Kostyak said the lawsuit would probably be filed in a New England state, although he hadn’t decided yet which one.
Wolves used to roam across much of North America, but they were pushed out of the Northeast in the late 1800s.
Now there are no known wolf populations living in the Northeast, although there are wolves living in eastern Canada near the U.S. border, and individual wolves have been found in Maine.
There are tens of thousands of acres of suitable wolf habitat in parts of northern New England and in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, experts say.
Even before the rule change, wolf restoration plans for the Northeast weren’t far advanced. The goal to reintroduce wolves was met with fierce opposition by some people who feared the effect on wildlife and farm animals.
The new rules put the Northeast into the same region as the Great Lakes states, Nickerson said.
This is despite a Fish and Wildlife Service study during the Clinton administration that emphasized the importance of wolves in the Northeast, believed to be genetically distinct from the Great Lakes animals, said Kostyack.
“In the Bush administration’s final rule, they didn’t retract any of that. Instead, instead they harped on the success in the western Great Lakes,” Kostyack said. “Never did they say the overall gray wolf population is OK. It’s not OK. You still have a very small range of occupied habitat.”