ADMINISTRATION MAKES PLAN LEGALLY BINDING
By BEN NEARY Associated Press
Gov. Matt Mead said Thursday he’s hopeful that a federal judge will agree a quick administrative fix is all that’s necessary to return wolf management to the state.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington, D.C., earlier this week stripped Wyoming of wolf-management authority and handed it back to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Jackson, in her order on Tuesday, agreed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that wolves in the Northern Rockies have recovered. She accepted the agency’s finding that wolves aren’t endangered or threatened within a significant portion of their range.
But Jackson also agreed with conservation groups that the federal agency was wrong to accept the state’s nonbinding promises to maintain at least 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs outside of Yellowstone and the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Mead’s administration responded Wednesday by ramrodding through an administrative rule making the state’s wolf plan legally binding. The Wyoming Attorney General’s Office has asked Jackson to reconsider her decision and return wolf management to the state. She hasn’t yet acted on the request.
“Recognizing that was a very narrow area and the rest was good, we’ve directed the attorney general to go ahead and ask for a stay,” Mead said. He emphasized that Wyoming for the past 12 years has stayed well above the 100 wolves/10 breeding pairs minimum.
Mead said there are now about 197 wolves and 15 breeding pairs in Wyoming excluding Yellowstone and the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Wyoming took over wolf management from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2012 under a state management plan that designated wolves as predators that could be shot on sight in most areas. The state classified wolves as trophy animals in a zone bordering Yellowstone National Park and has allowed licensed hunters to kill scores of them in the past two hunting seasons.
Mead said the state had almost 190 wolves and 15 breeding pairs left after the first hunting season in 2012 and just under 200 wolves and 15 breeding pairs after last year’s hunt.
“The trend line is good,” Mead said. “We’ve had more than enough wolves, and the predator area is working well. The trophy-game area is working well.”
Jackson’s order puts a stop to planned wolf hunts in Wyoming this year. In asking her to reconsider, the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office pointed out that the state has scheduled wolf hunting to begin on Oct. 1 and that the state Game and Fish Commission has approved letting hunters kill up to 43 wolves in the hunting season.
The Fish and Wildlife Service transferred wolf-management authority to Montana and Idaho years ago, and both those states allow hunting. Congress specified neither of those state management plans is subject to legal challenge.
The Defenders of Wildlife was among the groups that challenged Wyoming’s plan. Montana Lawyer Tim Preso represents the group and said Thursday it would oppose the state’s reconsideration request.
“We don’t view what the state has done as resolving the problem here,” Preso said.
Preso said his clients are concerned that a scientist who reviewed Wyoming’s wolf management plan before the federal government accepted it in 2012 expressed concerns that the state didn’t make a meaningful commitment to guarantee sufficient population.
John A. Vucetich of Michigan Technological University gave the only no vote after reviewing Wyoming’s plan while four scientists others approved it. In his review, Vucetich criticized Wyoming’s plan as vague and said it might overestimate the annual mortality wolf populations can sustain.