Wyoming moving forward with wolf management plan
By BEN NEARY
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it plans to release a study next week analyzing its proposal to ease restrictions on killing wolves in the northern Rockies to protect other wildlife and domesticated animals.
Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena, Mont., said Wednesday he expects his agency will release an environmental assessment next week. The public will have 30 days to comment on it.
Bangs said his agency has already received hundreds of thousands of comments on aspects of its ongoing proposal to remove wolves from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act possibly as soon as early next year.
Bangs’ agency announced this summer that it intends to ease restrictions on how state wildlife agencies in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho may kill wolves before the animals are removed from federal protections. The proposal would allow killing wolves above certain minimum population numbers if the states can show the animals are a major cause of elk and deer herds failing to meet state or tribal management goals.
Environmental groups have protested the federal proposal and promise legal action to try to block the plan.
Wyoming officials, however, say they’re pleased with what they see as progress to approve a state management plan for wolves that would allow an end to federal oversight.
Wyoming for the past several years has been the only one of the three states without a federally approved wolf management plan in place. The state continues to press a lawsuit over the federal governments’ rejection of its original 2003 management plan.
The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a draft management plan to Wyoming early this summer to break gridlock over the issue.
Terry Cleveland, director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, plans to present the draft wolf management plan to the state game commission Friday in Casper.
Under the proposed plan, Wyoming would agree not to let the wolf population drop below 100 animals in the state. The federal government estimates there are now just over 300 wolves in Wyoming.
Wolves would remain protected inside Yellowstone and adjoining wilderness areas. The state would agree to manage wolves as trophy game animals in a designated area of northwestern Wyoming, but the animals would be treated as predators that could be shot on sight outside that boundary.
Cleveland said he expects the game commission will direct his staff to take the management plan out for public comment. He said he expects the commission will give the plan final approval at its meeting Nov. 15-16 in Thermopolis.
Cara Eastwood, spokeswoman for Gov. Dave Freudenthal, said Wednesday that the state is confident that both the state and federal governments are doing what’s required to meet the late February deadline that the Wyoming Legislature set this spring for resolution of the wolf issue. If the deadline’s not met, legislation that allowed the governor’s office to negotiate with the federal government over wolf management will expire.
In addition to specifying that federal protections for wolves must be removed by the deadline, the Legislature also required that the ongoing lawsuit over the state’s 2003 proposed wolf management plan must also be resolved.
Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, is chairman of the House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee. He was among the legislators to push for wolf management legislation in the past session.
Childers said Wednesday that it looks like both the state and federal agencies have done all they can to resolve the wolf issue and turn management of the animals over to the state by the deadline.
Jenny Harbine, a lawyer with Earthjustice in Montana who tracks wolf issues, said Wednesday that recent reports show populations of elk and other wildlife at near all-time high population levels.
“There hasn’t been sufficient justification for wolf-killing period, no less the massive slaughter that Wyoming proposes to undertake,” Harbine said.
Harbine said that if the federal government pursues removing federal protections for wolves under the pending Wyoming plan, “we’ll certainly have to challenge that action in court.”
“The northern Rocky Mountain wolf can’t persist in viable numbers under Wyoming’s proposed wolf management regimen,” Harbine said.