SNRA finds wolves are not impaired by grazing
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
For 10 public lands livestock grazing
allotments on the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, public lands officials have
determined that cattle and sheep grazing do not impair Idaho’s reintroduced wolves.
What’s more, a U.S. District judge ruled
this week that Wolves in Idaho’s SNRA will be protected for a second grazing
season, even if the predators prey on livestock.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill
on Wednesday also clarified the injunction sought by Western Watersheds Project
and the Idaho Conservation League not only protects wolves on public property, but also on private land.
On June 11, 2002, Winmill also ordered the
SNRA to begin analyzing whether livestock grazing is impairing wolves. In his
finding, Winmill said the Forest Service had violated the law that created the
SNRA, called the Organic Act, by failing to consider whether grazing is
“substantially impairing” wolf populations.
SNRA officials released their first
Organic Act analysis for gray wolves in conjunction with a draft environmental
impact statement for grazing allotments in the East Fork of the Salmon River drainage.
In that document, the SNRA included
Organic Act studies for nine cattle allotments and one sheep allotment.
Remaining allotments, including those on
the west slope of the White Cloud Mountains where government crews have shot
wolves in response to livestock depredations, are nearly all sheep grazing allotments, said SNRA Area Ranger Deb Cooper.
Despite repeated conflicts between wolves
and livestock on the SNRA, Cooper said the issue of “substantial impairment” was determined as it relates to Idaho’s wolf population as a whole, not for local
populations of wolves only.
“Once again the court perceives this as a
limited remedy that will give the parties time to work out solutions while
allowing grazing to continue,” Winmill wrote this week.
In the past three years, at least 30
wolves have been killed or removed in and around the recreation area due to
conflicts with livestock, the environmental groups said. About 4,470 sheep and 2,500 graze on 28 Forest Service allotments there.