Wolf Protections Loosened
BY BRENT ISRAELSEN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Some advice to the wolves of Utah: Go south.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on Tuesday loosened federal protection for the wolf in the northern half of the state, but it kept the highest classification of “endangered” for the southern half.
The decision — likely to be challenged in court by environmentalists — was part of a nationwide rule that “downlisted” the wolf’s protected status in much of the United States.
It comes as the agency plans to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list altogether.
And although the wolf has returned to a small fraction of its historic range, federal officials said the 30-year effort to return the wolf to its “core” habitat is laudable.
“This is a significant regulatory milestone in the recovery of the gray wolf,” said Craig Manson, assistant secretary of the Department of Interior.
Utah officials welcomed the wolf’s reclassification.
“It’s a good first step in the state’s regaining management authority for wolves,” said Craig McLaughlin, mammals coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
With wolves known to be roaming to Utah from Yellowstone, McLaughlin’s office is preparing to manage the species when it is removed from the endangered list.
Virtually exterminated from the lower 48 states in the early part of the 20th century, the wolf was one of the first animals placed on the endangered list after Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1972.
The FWS soon set about “recovering” the species in Minnesota and in the Northern Rocky Mountains.
Both efforts have been highly successful, with about 3,000 wolves now inhabiting the Great Lakes region and about 700 in the Northern Rockies.
In 1995, wolves captured in Canada were transplanted to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.
Other wolves were allowed to naturally recolonize northwestern Montana.
“The wolf population in the Northern Rockies is increasing about 26 percent per year,” said Joe Fontaine, assistant director of the FWS team leading that recovery effort.
Having met the recovery goals of 30 breeding pairs for three years in a row, the FWS can now call the species “threatened,” a more flexible legal status than “endangered.”
Under endangered status, only the federal government can remove, harass or kill wolves.
Under a proposed designation, livestock owners can kill wolves themselves but only if the animals are in the act of attacking livestock or pets.
The following acts by private individuals are still forbidden under threatened designation:
* Hunting down a wolf believed to have killed livestock;
* Killing wolves for sport;
* Mistakenly killing wolves thought to be coyotes.
In Utah, wolves found in all areas north of Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 50, which dissect the state almost at its midsection, now are considered “threatened.”
Wolves found south of those highways are still “endangered” and part of a different population of wolves, known as the “southwestern distinct population segment.”
The boundary, originally proposed at the Utah-Arizona line, was moved farther north in anticipation of wolves wandering away from the southwestern population, which is not doing as well as the other populations.
“We are trying to set a reasonable boundary for dispersal from those core areas,” said Ron Refsnider, wolf recovery coordinator for the FWS’ Midwest office. “The highways provided real nice boundaries for the public to recognize.”
McLaughlin said dividing Utah into two separate management zones may confuse some people, although the likelihood of wolves moving into southern Utah, either from northern Utah or from Arizona, is “remote” in the next few years.
Environmentalists immediately condemned the FWS decision to downlist the gray wolf, calling it a case of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
The National Wildlife Federation is urging the government to undertake recovery efforts in other states, noting that under the FWS plan, the wolf could be considered recovered in Colorado despite the fact that there are no wolves in that state.
Defenders of Wildlife, which runs a fund that compensates ranchers for losses to wolves, also criticized the decision, saying it would “leave the species facing legalized killing by hostile state governments and illegal killing by antiwolf fanatics.”