Oregon prepares to oversee wolves
The feds may drop them from the endangered list.
JEFF BARNARD
Statesman Journal
February 8, 2003
GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Once the federal government relaxes protection for the
gray wolf, which could happen this month, the state of Oregon will have
authority to allow ranchers to shoot wolves preying on livestock,
according to the state Attorney General’s Office.
However, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, which has the
responsibility to create a plan for managing wolves that stray into the
state from Idaho, would not be able to authorize any wolf to be shot on
sight or to send them back to another state, the report said.
The report, prepared by Assistant State Attorney General William Cook, was
delivered to the commission Friday at their monthly meeting in Portland,
along with a summary of the 15 town meetings held around the state where a
leading theme was concern that wolves would kill livestock.
“The agency is legally obligated to conserve the species based on current
law and has to develop a conservation plan, recovery plan or management
plan,” Craig Ely, northeast regional manager for the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife in La Grande, said in a telephone interview.
“One thing we want to emphasize, we have no plans – zero plans – to
actively reintroduce wolves in the state of Oregon,” Ely added. “We
recognize the fact they can come into the state of Oregon from the Idaho
population.”
The commission began working last year on how it will deal with wolves
moving into the state, and bills have been introduced in the Legislature
that would take the wolf off the state endangered species list, as well as
abolish the state Endangered Species Act.
However, so long as wolves remain protected by federal and state law,
Oregon will be obligated to protect them, Ely said.
Wolves were hunted to extinction in Oregon more than 50 years ago to keep
sheep and cattle herds safe, but they went on the state endangered species
list after they were put on the federal list in 1974.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service successfully reintroduced gray wolves
in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The agency expects the predator to be
dropped from endangered to threatened species protection later this month,
and removed from Endangered Species Act protection entirely by 2004.
At that point, management of wolves will be left entirely to the states,
and Oregon has already had three confirmed cases of wolves migrating into
the state from Idaho. One wolf was shot, one was hit by a car and one was
captured and sent back to Idaho. There was an unconfirmed sighting of five
wolves along the Middle Fork of the John Day River in Eastern Oregon last
November.