By Scotta Callister Blue Mountain Eagle
SALEM – Halting the killing of two wolves in Wallowa County will undermine the objectives of the state’s wolf management plan, nine Eastern Oregon counties say.
The counties made that argument in a “friend of the court” brief filed last Wednesday, Oct. 26, with the Oregon Court of Appeals.
The brief supports the state’s argument in the legal battle that began about a month ago, when three environmental groups sought a stay from the court to prevent the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife from killing the two wolves. The court issued the stay order Oct. 6, giving the state until Oct. 26 to file its response.
Officials in Wallowa County, home to most of the wolf activity to date in Oregon, rallied neighboring counties to join in a court brief opposing the environmentalists’ case. Joining in the brief are Grant, Umatilla, Union, Baker, Gilliam, Crook, Morrow and Harney counties.
Their brief, filed by attorneys Ronald S. Yockim and Dominic M. Carollo, said the process leading to adoption of a wolf management plan was “long and difficult” for the stakeholders, which included representatives of the county governments as well as the environmental groups.
“While the counties were not completely satisfied with the outcome, it is imperative that all of the management tools adopted by the plan – including lethal options – be available at all times,” the brief stated.
The counties reiterated concerns, voiced during the wolf plan development, about the impact of wolves on the livestock industry “which is a foundation of many of the Counties’ economies.”
The brief also noted the counties’ concerns that some conservation goals placed too great a burden on the citizens of wolf-habitat counties.
“However, the Counties nevertheless took some solace from the expectation that the compromises reached in the Wolf Plan, as it was adopted, would be implemented,” the brief said.
The counties argued that the conservation groups seeking the stay had been actively engaged in the planning process. Not satisfied with the result, “petitioners now seek to sabotage the implementation of the Wolf Plan,” the county brief said.
The counties also said it is important to preserve the state’s option to kill problem wolves, noting the Imnaha pack is implicated in the death of 14 livestock animals over the last year and a half in Wallowa County.
The legal wrangling was sparked by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Sept. 30 order to kill the alpha male and a younger male from the Imnaha pack.
Granting the stay would leave the landowners and the state “to continue trying (nonlethal) methods already proven ineffective,” the county brief said.
Attorneys for the counties and for the state also say the conservation groups’ claims won’t stand up in court, and that the law allows killing of wolves.
In the state’s response, also filed Oct. 26, Oregon Attorney General John Kroger said the state wolf management plan allows killing of wolves in cases of “chronic depredation.”
The state contends the stay will do more harm than good. Killing two wolves “will not cause irreparable harm to the gray wolf population in Oregon,” the state argued, but will make residents in northeastern Oregon more tolerant of the animals’ re-entry into the region.
Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three conservation groups that sought the stay, doesn’t buy that. He says the groups don’t see an exemption in state law that allows the state to kill wolves.
“The wolf population is too small to take these kinds of killings,” he said.
The state counts 14 wolves in Oregon and under the management plan is required to treat them as endangered until at least four breeding pairs are established in Eastern Oregon for three consecutive years.
Dan Kruse, an attorney for the conservation groups, said last Friday that the state’s expectation that killing problem wolves will increase public tolerance for wolves is misguided.
He expects the appellate court to rule at any time on the stay order. Afterward, he expects both sides to file more briefs on the question of state authority to kill wolves.
Where the state argues that it kills problem animals reluctantly, Kruse and his clients see it differently.
Steve Pedery, Oregon Wild conservation director, said his organization supports the wolf plan, even in instances where wolves are killed as a last resort.
However, he said, “over a year or 18 months, the state is in the habit of issuing kill permits whenever there’s a conflict.”
“The case they’re trying to make, that acquiescing to demands to shoot wolves when they threaten livestock, results in an ever-increasing demand to shoot more wolves.”