Gray wolf considered federally endangered in western two-thirds of state
By Dylan J. Darling / The Bulletin
The gray wolf coming off Oregon’s endangered species list does not mean it is open season on the controversial animal, particularly in Central Oregon where the wolf is still protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.
By a 4-2 vote Monday, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission removed the gray wolf from the state’s protected list , which includes other mammals such as the Canada lynx and fish such as the bull trout.
The state delisting was mainly ceremonial as the state’s Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan requires more breeding pairs of wolves be found in consecutive years before Oregon could allow any controlled hunts of wolves in response to declines in wildlife numbers or attacks on livestock. And that would occur in Eastern Oregon, where more wolves are found, before it happens in Central Oregon.
“Nothing basically is changing,” Michelle Dennehy, spokeswoman for state Fish and Wildlife in Salem, said Thursday.
Any wolf found in the western two-thirds of Oregon is still federally listed, wrote Elizabeth Materna, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland, in an email.
“The ESA protects listed species by prohibiting take (such as harm, harassment, hunting or killing) unless a federal permit has been issued for specific activities,” she wrote. “Although, there is an exception for an immediate threat to human safety.”
While off the state endangered species list, wolves still have some protections under the state wolf plan, which was released in 2005 and updated in 2010. Another revision is set for next year.
Reaction to the wolf’s delisting in Oregon was mixed, with ranchers cheering the decision and environmental groups warning of potential lawsuits.
The delisting was the proper thing for the state Fish and Wildlife Commission to do, said Todd Nash, wolf committee chairman for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.
“I’m glad they did it,” said Nash, a rancher near Enterprise.
But the reaction to the delisting was markedly different from Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf organizer for the Center for Biological Diversity. The Arizona-based environmental group has offices around the country, including in Oregon, California and Washington. Weiss used to live in Oregon and now works out of Petaluma, California.
“It’s disgraceful,” Weiss said. “Wolves are not recovered in Oregon.”
Her group is considering a lawsuit questioning whether the state Fish and Wildlife Commission violated Oregon’s Endangered Species Act in taking the wolf off the endangered species list. She contends that the wolf did not meet all the requirements to be removed from the list, and state officials ignored scientific reports about the status of the animal.
Wolves had been listed for state protection since 1987, when the Oregon Legislature passed the state Endangered Species Act. In adopting the law, all federally protected species found or once found in the state also became protected by the state. Wolves had been wiped from Oregon by the 1940s in part because of state-sponsored hunts.
The reintroduction of wolves to the West started in the 1990s in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Since then wolves have moved into Oregon from Idaho.
At the end of 2014 Oregon had at least 77 known wolves, most in the northeast part of the state. Wolves have spread to other parts of the state in recent years, with at least one known wolf pack now found in the Cascades of southern Oregon.
In 2011 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed wolves from the federal endangered species act list for much of the West and since 2013 there has been a proposal to also delist them for Western Oregon and Washington, said John Stephenson, Oregon wolf coordinator for the agency. The proposal has not been finalized yet, but federal wildlife managers support state efforts to recover wolves.
“(We) look in the not-too-distant future to have the states fully in charge of managing wolves in Oregon and Washington,” he said.