Wyo lawmakers express wolf plan doubts
By The Associated Press
CHEYENNE — Some Wyoming legislators expressed concern Thursday about a forthcoming federal proposal to resolve the dispute over management of wolves in the state.
Meanwhile, Idaho’s new governor told people rallying at that state’s Capitol that he will support public hunts to kill up to 550 wolves, and that he hopes to shoot a wolf himself after the animals are removed from federal protection.
The dispute between Wyoming and federal officials over wolf management has been stewing for the past few years and has prevented removing wolves from Endangered Species Act protection in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it’s close to submitting a formal proposal to the state of Wyoming intended at ending the dispute.
Some Wyoming legislators, however, say they have concerns about the informal proposals they’ve heard so far from the federal agency, including its call to designate a permanent area in northwest Wyoming in which wolves would be managed as trophy game animals.
Gov. Dave Freudenthal encouraged lawmakers in his State of the State address on Wednesday to keep alive placeholder bills in both legislative houses so the state will be ready to act when it receives a formal federal proposal.
“I’m not in a position today to say that there will be a bill recommended to you this session,” Freudenthal said. “But I would ask that as we move through the session that you keep some vehicles alive in the event that we are able to reach an agreement, that we are able to respond to a most vexatious issue for the state.”
The federal government in 2004 rejected the state’s original wolf plan and the state has filed a lawsuit, now pending in federal court, over the issue.
In its original plan, Wyoming had proposed allowing state Game and Fish Department officials to adjust the size of a trophy wolf management area around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Outside that area, the state proposed wolves be classified as predators that could be shot on sight.
Late last year, the Fish and Wildlife Service informally proposed designating a permanent wolf area would extend from Cody south to Meeteetse, around the western boundary of the Wind River Indian Reservation down to Pinedale, west to the Alpine area and then back north to Yellowstone National Park. The state would manage wolves in that area as trophy game; animals outside would be classified as predators.
Mitch King, regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver, said Thursday he expects his agency will submit a formal proposal to Wyoming in time for the Legislature to act.
King said his agency will post a notice soon in the Federal Register regarding the proposal to take the wolf off the federal endangered species list.
“I remain optimistic,” King said. “I think we’ve got some good discussions going on. I’ve had some discussions with the legislators up there, as well as (state) Game and Fish folks.”
Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody and chairman of the House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee, said Thursday that he’s sponsoring one of the placeholder bills on the wolf issue and expects another to be sponsored in the Senate.
“The problem we have is the questions that were sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” Childers said. “Until we have a clear-cut offer of what they want us to do, until that, it’s very difficult to go out to the public.”
Sen. Majority Floor Leader John Hines, R-Gillette, is a rancher. He said Thursday that he’s concerned about the federal proposal for a permanent wolf area.
“I’m concerned about the size of it,” Hines said, “and the private lands both in that area and around it.”
Hines said he’s not convinced that any legislation to approve of the federal government’s plan for a permanent wolf area will pass this session, even if the federal agency is able to answer all the state’s questions.
“Just my own opinion, I think it would be a hard sell,” Hines said.
Wolves were reintroduced to the northern Rocky Mountains a decade ago after being hunted to near-extinction. They now number more than 1,200 in the region.
Idaho’s approach
The head of the Fish and Wildlife Service has said his agency would start removing federal protection from wolves in Montana and Idaho in the next few weeks. While Wyoming’s plan is tied up in lawsuits, Fish and Wildlife is moving ahead with Idaho and Montana, where federal officials have already approved wolf-management plans.
Once wolves are officially delisted, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission will decide how many wolves will be culled through public hunts, poison baiting, aerial shootings or other methods.
Idaho’s plan currently calls for maintaining a minimum of 15 packs. The Idaho Office of Species Conservation estimates the state’s current wolf population at about 650, in roughly 60 packs.
However, new Gov. Butch Otter told The Associated Press after a rally of hunters on the Idaho Capitol steps that he wants hunters to gradually kill about 550 of the animals, leaving about 100 wolves or 10 packs, the minimum the federal government would allow before wolves again would be considered endangered.
“That management includes you,” Otter told the approximately 300 hunters, many wearing camouflage clothing and blaze-orange caps. “I’m prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself.”
Idaho Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife bused in wolf opponents from as far as Twin Falls, 130 miles away, for the rally with Otter and several state lawmakers. They urged the government to immediately remove wolves from endangered species protection.
Otter also signed a proclamation making Thursday “Idaho Sportsmen Day.”
The crowd — including one hunter with a stuffed baby fox around his neck and a sign declaring “Wolves are illegal immigrants too” — stood for more than an hour in the midmorning snow. They applauded wildly as Otter amplified their position that wolves are rapidly killing elk and other animals essential to Idaho’s multimillion-dollar hunting industry.
But Suzanne Stone, a spokeswoman for the wolf advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife in Boise, said most biological studies show that wolves do not substantially damage elk or other big game herds.
She said Otter’s proposal to sustain Idaho’s population at the “very edge of the minimum required for survival” would return wolves to the verge of eradication.
“Essentially he has confirmed our worst fears for the state of Idaho: that this would be a political rather than a biological management of the wolf population,” Stone said. “There’s no economic or ecological reason for maintaining such low numbers. It’s simple persecution.”