Wyo sues Interior over wolf documents
By TOM MORTON
Wolves continue to multiply, and trees continue to die for more paper in yet the newest legal salvo between Wyoming and the federal government over the reintroduction of Canis lupus.
The Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service in November rejected the state’s wolf management plan, and now Wyoming demands the release of at least 69 undisclosed records or groups of records to explain the decision, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday by Wyoming Attorney General Pat Crank.
“If the court forces (the Fish and Wildlife Service) to produce the documents, it shows the fallacy of their rejecting the plan put forward by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission,” he said.
It’s not that the state hasn’t tried to get the documents.
On April 22, the state sued the Department of Interior to force it to immediately approve the state’s wolf management plan and move forward toward delisting the gray wolf in the West.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office corresponded with the department for four months since January to request the withheld documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), according to the complaint.
Crank knows the documents exist based on a Department of Interior list of correspondence among state and federal officials, he said Friday. The state already has much of that information.
But Crank doesn’t know what the undisclosed documents state, and he’s been increasingly frustrated about getting them, he said.
On May 20, the Department of Interior FOIA Appeals Officer Julia Laws wrote that the department would deny the state’s request to release the documents, according to an exhibit in the lawsuit.
“The Department hopes, however, that you will defer action until a substantive decision has been reached on your appeal,” Laws wrote.
By Tuesday, the state had deferred long enough.
“We appealed their decision,” Crank said Friday. “They never acted on our appeal.”
Crank signed off on the lawsuit on Wednesday and filed it in U.S. District Court on Thursday. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson.
The FOIA lawsuit is the latest round in the decade-long conflict over wolf reintroduction.
In 1995, the Department of Interior reintroduced the gray wolf into Yellowstone National Park under the Endangered Species Act, and the wolves multiplied past expectations in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
Wyoming’s Game and Fish Commission crafted a plan calling for the wolves to remain protected in the national parks and adjacent wilderness areas, but would be treated as predatory animals throughout the rest of the state.
Ten of 11 Department of Interior wolf biologists concluded that the plan — along with Idaho’s and Montana’s plans — would protect the wolf, according to the lawsuit.
The Endangered Species Act, Crank said, requires that decisions about delisting endangered species must be “based solely on the best commercial and scientific data available.”
But the department and the Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the plan on Nov. 4, 2003, for other reasons.
Crank cited a Jan. 15 statement from Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior, who spoke to the Legislature’s Joint Interim Committee on Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources about the decision.
“From a strictly science perspective, yes, the plans were deemed adequate,” Crank said, recounting Hoffman’s comments. “It’s the legal consideration that prompts us to say no at this time. Our legal analysis was based on litigation risk management principles.”
Crank has no idea what “litigation risk management principles” means, he said.
Nor does he understand the term “pre-decisional,” a term used for 60 agency documents withheld by the Department of Interior, he said.
These documents were prepared from Sept. 5, 2002, 13 months before the Game and Fish Commission submitted its plan to the department, through Jan. 23, 2004, three months after the department rejected the plan, according to the lawsuit.
The department also stated that it was withholding nine agency records based on “attorney-client privilege,” according to the lawsuit.
Both of these arguments violate the FOIA, and Wyoming wants the court to order the Department of Interior to turn over all the records requested by Wyoming, according to the lawsuit.