State seeks to ease wolf protection
03/23/03
BILL MONROE
NEWPORT — The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has asked the Legislature to adjust the state’s endangered species act and make it more consistent with federal law that now allows the killing of problem wolves.
There are no known resident wolves in Oregon. But three from Idaho’s highly successful federal recovery program have been sighted in the state in the past two years. None killed livestock while here, but biologists are bracing for what they think is an inevitable expansion of packs across the Snake River and into Oregon.
In most states where they’ve been reintroduced, wolves occasionally kill livestock, especially when deer and elk or other wild game is scarce. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced last week it had loosened protection for the gray wolf throughout most of its range in northern states and is preparing to remove it altogether from the endangered species list.
Even under the federal Endangered Species Act, though, federal laws allow kill permits to be issued to ranchers for wolves that kill livestock. The Oregon endangered species act doesn’t. Department officials drafted and submitted to the Legislature changes to bring the state act in line with the federal. The Fish and Wildlife Commission hopes a revised state act will become the cornerstone of a wolf management plan.
In its meeting here Thursday, commissioners asked the department to draft by its April 11 meeting an outline of issues, solutions and a workload for an advisory group it will appoint to develop the plan. “To do nothing is really not an option,” said Commissioner Marla Rae. “We can’t ignore them and then light our hair on fire when they get here.”
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The department’s request to the Legislature, according to agency officials, may have the support of Gov. Ted Kulongoski. Lindsay Ball, department director, told the commission that the governor’s office gave its tentative blessing to an adjustment that the department passed along to a house committee reviewing the act. Among other things, it would allow landowners to protect their livestock and property from wolves. “The key word is allow, not require,” Ball said.
Ron Anglin, the department’s wildlife division chief, said revisions to the state law will also allow more flexibility in dealing with other state-listed species being downlisted from federal protection, among them the Aleutian Canada goose. “It’s not just about the wolf,” he said.
Ultimately, the Legislature seems likely to make specific decisions about wolves, ranging from removing them from the state list to declaring them either predators or game animals, depending upon the department’s management plan.
For the time being, Kulongoski has said he doesn’t want any major tinkering with or repeal of the state act. Several bills have been introduced as a result of the quandary posed by the wolf’s approach.
Agency officials and commissioners are reviewing whether Oregon has the legal authority to delist the wolf from the state act based solely on its success in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.
They discussed but didn’t act upon the strategy in an executive session Thursday preceding a public session on wolves.
Both proponents and opponents testified, leaving little doubt among commissioners that the state needs to prepare for wolves living in its forests. “Wild and free in Oregon means in my back yard,” said Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day. “Those who want wolves probably will not have to live with them.”
Union County Commissioner Colleen McLeod of La Grande was even more blunt. “Wolves in my county are like turning loose a computer virus in the downtown Portland business district,” she said.
Wolf advocates, however, said wolves thrive without troubling humans in populated states like Wisconsin, where they rarely kill livestock and never attack people.
Commissioner Jeff Feldner of Siletz said the Coast Mountain Range near his home may eventually prove even better wolf habitat than northeast Oregon, where they’re expected to first establish themselves. “They’re an important part of the ecosystem,” said Sylvia Pauly of Newport.
In the end, though, it will be up to the wolves themselves, said Mark Henjum, a department biologist in La Grande. “Until we get wolves and they tell us where they want to be, we’re going to have a tough time developing a specific management plan,” he said.