Wyo to disband wolf team
By CHRIS MERRILL
Star-Tribune environment reporter
LANDER — Wyoming’s four-man wolf management team is expected to be officially disbanded Monday — fallout from the federal decision to put wolves back on the endangered species list.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is recommending to the Game and Fish Commission that it re-assign two of the department’s remaining three wolf specialists, an agency spokesman said.
The Game and Fish Commission will meet Monday and Tuesday in Jackson, and its members will likely decide Monday afternoon whether to enact this recommendation, said Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Game and Fish Department.
Mike Jimenez, who was briefly the coordinator of the state’s wolf management program, is no longer with the Game and Fish Department, he told the Star-Tribune recently.
Because wolves are once again protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, Jimenez has returned solely to his role with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as the wolf recovery project leader for the state of Wyoming.
When Jimenez, based in Jackson, was with the Game and Fish Department, he had three wolf specialists working under him, one each based in Cody, Pinedale and Lander.
Brian Foster, human resources manager for the Game and Fish Department, previously told the Star-Tribune two of the three wolf specialists are earning $3,704 per month, and the third — a longer-term employee who transferred into the position — is making $4,364 monthly.
Jimenez’s salary was being paid by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during what was supposed to be a transition to permanent state management of wolves.
“When we got the general fund money for those positions, we anticipated wolves would be delisted and the department would be managing wolves throughout the trophy game area,” Keszler said. “Obviously now all that’s changed, so we don’t need all four of those positions.”
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is still responsible for investigating livestock losses to wolves within the state’s wolf trophy game area, in the northwest corner of the state, so department officials are recommending that the commission retain one of the wolf specialists to perform the investigations, Keszler said.
By state law, the Game and Fish Department must reimburse livestock producers for confirmed losses to wolves inside the trophy game zone, and that hasn’t changed with their federal relisting. But state lawmakers could get rid of that provision during the 2009 legislative session.
The Game and Fish Department would like to reassign the other two wolf specialists to general trophy game positions, Keszler said, where they will help manage all trophy game animals, including bears and mountain lions.
The Bush administration removed wolves in this part of the country from protection under the Endangered Species Act in March, handing over management to Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. That decision was challenged as soon as legally possible in federal court by a dozen conservation and animal rights organizations.
In July, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Montana sided with the conservation organizations and issued an injunction against the rule, saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to ensure genetic exchange between the three main wolf populations in the three states, and had flip-flopped on Wyoming’s “dual status” plan, by first rejecting it and then accepting it, without justification for the change.
That decision in July effectively restored federal endangered species status to wolves until a decision in the larger legal challenge was handed down.
In October, at the request of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the judge “vacated” the delisting rule, essentially making it void.
The Game and Fish Department has since revised its wolf management plan to clarify its commitment to maintain at least 15 breeding pairs of the canines and 150 individual wolves in the state, and added new language that further restricts Wyoming’s ability to change the trophy game boundary.
The agency took public comment on its revised rules until Monday, and will be presenting the rule changes to the Game and Fish Commission on Tuesday.
By revising its management plan, Wyoming is trying to address some of Judge Molloy’s concerns and avoid being left out of a new attempt by the federal government to once again remove wolves in the Northern Rockies from the endangered species list.
All three states created trophy game zones for wolves, but Wyoming was the only one to establish a “predator” area for the animals where they could be shot on sight by anybody, without limits.
Wyoming’s predator management area for wolves was one of the items of concern cited by Judge Molloy in his injunction ruling.
The classification of wolves as trophy game in the northwest corner and predators everywhere else is written into state law. Although there has been talk amongst some lawmakers of possibly designating wolves as trophy game animals statewide, such a change could only be done by the state Legislature, which doesn’t meet until January.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting public comment on its new proposal to delist wolves through Nov. 28. The agency is considering delisting the animals in Idaho and Montana only, and leaving them designated as endangered in Wyoming.