Starting at county level it will try to challenge feds’ involvement.
By Mike Koshmrl
EVANSTON — A U.S. District Court judge’s September decision to relist Wyoming wolves under the Endangered Species Act has generated hefty opposition: multiple legal appeals and political pledges to reverse then judge’s order legislatively.
The latest effort to restore state management of wolves is in the vein of the Sagebrush Rebellion and rests on a belief that the federal government has no jurisdictional authority over the controversial carnivore where it roams in Wyoming.
About two dozen residents gathered Saturday morning in Evanston for the inaugural meeting of the Wyomingites for Effective Government. A board was assembled, testimony was taken, minutes were gathered, and the group set in motion a plan to challenge the federal government.
“We are talking about one issue and one issue alone,” said Bob Wharff, a hunting advocate who organized the meeting. “That is we are trying to answer the question whether or not there is a proper commerce to trigger Endangered Species Act protections being applied to Wyoming’s wolves.
“We’re not going to look at anything other than that,” Wharff said. “We’re not going to talk about Wyoming’s plan, we’re not going to talk about genetics.
“At the end of the day, what we hope to be able to do is draft a resolution that we will then take forward to our county commissioners throughout the state and hopefully be able to get them to hold an evidentiary hearing.”
The gathering was attended by a wide array of Wyoming residents, from ranchers to curious Evanston residents to high state officials. State Rep. Marti Halverson, R-Etna, was there, joined by other state-level elected officials, including Allen Jaggi, Kit Jennings, Garry Piiparinen and Lynn Hutchings.
The ringleader of the meeting was Ed Presley, a Nevada resident with ties to Cliven Bundy who called himself a “research specialist.”
Presley explained the perceived legal basis for the group’s challenge.
“Under Wyoming law there is no such thing as an endangered species,” Presley said. “Endangered species — the term and status — originates in international treaty law.”
Frequently digressing deep into constitutional and environmental legal history, Presley said people at the meeting should dismiss federal wildlife managers who now prohibit hunting of Wyoming’s wolves.
“We have now classified our gray wolf, and our gray wolf does not meet the terms found in section nine [of the Endangered Species Act],” he said.
Wyomingites for Effective Government originally sought to hold an “evidentiary hearing” through the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee but was turned down.
“We had a phone conference and heard the attorneys, the leaders say, ‘No, we’re leaving it totally to Gov. Mead to go through our congressional delegation to see if they can get something passed,’” said Rep. Jaggi, R-Lyman. “We wanted to do the right thing but we got denied, so now we’re doing the best we can do. And we appreciate you folks coming to start this process.”
Several people at the meeting strategized ways to get around the governor.
“I’ve dealt with the governor as lately as this homosexual issue — quoted the law, quoted the biblical law — and I got a lawyer calling me back saying, ‘You know what, we can’t do anything about this,’” said Rep. Hutchings, R-Cheyenne.
“What I’m afraid of here with everything else I have seen in the governor’s office is they’ll get this and they’ll squash it,” Hutchings said. “How can we get around that?”
Presley offered a solution that he framed as a “mindset.”
“We are those same set of delegates that showed up and fixed their name to that document called the Declaration of Independence,” Presley said. “That’s the same thing that we have here. We’re going to fix our names to this resolution that’s going to come out here.
“And this resolution is going to be very precise on this wolf matter, as to why this gray wolf is not under the jurisdiction of the Endangered Species Act,” he said. “We will march with that, and it will grow, and we will take that to the counties.”
Disdain for the federal government was easy to come by at the Evanston meeting.
“We have a tendency to believe that the people in Washington, D.C., make all the rules and we have to abide by those rules,” Wharff said. “The reality is there are many, many jurisdictional responsibilities that rest with the state.”
An evidentiary hearing, Wharff has said, is a maneuver that can diminish the control the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has over federally protected species.
Vermont Law School professor Pat Parentau, a specialist in Endangered Species Act law, said he has never heard of an evidentiary hearing. Parentau’s hunch was that the gathering was a form of “kangaroo court.”
“I don’t dismiss the political salience of some of this,” the professor said, “but as a constitutional legal issue I don’t think that any of that matters.
“Somebody can’t just decide to hold a hearing and decide, ‘We don’t have to obey,’” he said.
Serious legal challenges of the commerce clause, however, could have major implications for the Endangered Species Act, Parentau said.
Still, he predicted it was a “dead argument” in the case of Wyoming’s wolves — part of an interstate population that is hunted.
“Species of much more limited range and much less commercial value have been protected by the Endangered Species Act up against commerce clause arguments,” Parentau said.