Wolf downgrade no help to ranchers
Oregon’s law now has stricter protection for the animal than the federal government.
GILLIAN FLACCUS
The Associated Press
March 19, 2003
PORTLAND — Oregon ranchers braced for the return of the gray wolf will have to wait for state action before being able to shoot wolves that prey on their herds now that the federal government has downgraded protection for the predators from endangered to threatened.
Though no wolves live in Oregon now, at least three from the packs reintroduced in neighboring Idaho have strayed into the state, and ranchers are anxious to see the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission give them permission to shoot any that kill cattle and sheep when the state establishes its own management plan for the predators.
“It’s our job to defend our livestock. It isn’t what we do, to allow harm to come to our animals and stand and watch them being ripped apart by a pack of wolves,” said Mack Birkmaier, 72, a rancher near Enterprise in the northeastern corner of Oregon. “To watch them go through that and not do anything would be terrible.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downgraded wolves on Tuesday from endangered to threatened.
The move means Oregon’s Endangered Species Act, enacted in 1987, now has stricter protections for wolves than the federal government until the state Fish and Wildlife Commission establishes a management plan. That plan could allow ranchers to get permits to kill wolves threatening their herds, but not to shoot wolves on sight, according to advice from the state attorney general’s office.
Once hunted close to extinction to protect cattle and sheep herds, wolves have rebounded in reintroduction programs in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, and have begun straying into neighboring states like Oregon and Washington.
The federal decision applies across the country except for the Southwest. Several other populations will continue to be managed as “experimental” populations under different rules that allow ranchers to kill animals caught attacking livestock.
The Oregon wildlife commission is scheduled to take public testimony on what the state’s wolf management plan should look like when it meets Thursday in Newport. The meeting will include discussion of how the new federal designation “meshes” with Oregon’s rules, said Ron Anglin, wildlife division administrator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“Once wolves are downlisted by the feds, what does that mean to Oregon now that we’ve got a more restrictive rule? We must look at the federal ruling and the stipulations they’ve laid out and find out what flexibility that provides the state,” he said.
Oregon ranchers said they were encouraged by the wolf’s lowered federal status, but frustrated by the state law that still prevents them from killing the creatures.
“Oregon does not have those spaces like they do in the vast wildernesses of the other states,” said Glen Stonebrink, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. “We have a lot of public land, but not habitat that would be conducive to the wolf. So the wolf will be decimating our big game and eating off our livestock and that will cause conflict.”
Several bills have been introduced in the state Legislature that would take the wolf off the state endangered species list, as well as abolish the state Endangered Species Act.