By Steve Tool
Wallowa County Chieftain
Center for Biological Diversity and Western Environmentasl Law Center file lawsuit to stop Wildlife Services from killing Oregon wolves.
In a move that surprised some, the conservation groups Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Environmental Law Center filed a Feb. 3 lawsuit against Wildlife Services to prevent the organization from killing Oregon wolves. The lawsuit was filed in a Federal District Court in Portland in concert with four other conservation groups: Cascadia Wildlands, WildEarth Guardians, Predator Defense and Project Coyote.
Wildlife Services is an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. According to its website, “Wildlife Services provides Federal leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts that threaten the nation’s agriculture, human health and safety, property, and natural resources, including wildlife itself.”
The agency’s duties occasionally include killing wolves, predators and other wildlife.
Cascadia Wildlands attorney Nick Cady said conservationists recently won a “resounding victory” in a similar lawsuit in Washington state that found the Wildlife Services wolf-killing program illegal. That success spurred the Oregon lawsuit. He said that Wildlife Services has set itself up in both Washington and Oregon to have the authority to kill wolves through the auspices of a National Environmental Policy Act, which does not include thorough environmental impact studies as a prerequisite for taking lethal action against wolves.
“It’s a basic requirement of federal law that if you’re going to do stuff that impacts the environment and involves taxpayer money, then you have to analyze the environmental impact of it, and they didn’t do that at all in Washington or Oregon,” Cady said.
Cady said a legal loophole allowed Wildlife Services to kill predators while skirting the environmental impact issue by using the argument that if they didn’t kill the predators in question, someone else would. Conservation groups lost two lawsuits as a result. Two years ago, however, Arizona conservationists won a case against Wildlife Services in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which motivated Cascadia Wildlands and others to file suit in Washington and Oregon.
A number of Oregon wolf packs have satisfied the depredation requirements for lethal take under Phase Two of the state’s wolf management plan and a wolf could lethally taken by authorities at any time in Oregon according to Cady. Oregon Department of Wildlife officials dispute that claim.
With the oral arguments and briefings involved in the suit, Cady said he doesn’t expect a resolution for at least a year, and perhaps two. He specified that the lawsuit did not seek injunctive relief (in this case, a court order to stop a particular action before a resolution is reached).
Wallowa County Commissioner Susan Roberts said the suit didn’t make sense to her.
“(Wildlife Services) can’t kill a wolf because we’re on the state program and we’re delisted on our side of the state. The state program takes precedence.”
Roblyn Brown, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife assistant wolf coordinator, said that while Roberts is technically correct, the ODFW can contract with Wildlife Services to act as their agent in predator control. Brown cited an example in which the state hired Wildlife Services to kill two wolves in the Keating area in Baker County for chronic depredation in 2008. She added that the ODFW ultimately is the agency responsible for determining whether a pack falls under the chronic depredation classification under Phase Two of the Oregon Wolf Management Plan, and is the only agency that can order that lethal action be taken against wolves.
“To my knowledge, there’s no lawsuit saying that we couldn’t (take lethal action),” Brown said.
She also said that no wolf packs in Northeastern Oregon currently are under the gun in regards to chronic depredation.
“We are not in chronic depredation for any packs in Northeast Oregon right now. We have to be in chronic depredation before we go to lethal removal of wolves.”