Wyoming Wolf Plan Changing
By Penny Preston
CODY, WYOMING – The state of Wyoming is under the gun to change it’s wolf management plan. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may leave the Cowboy state out of it’s new proposed delisting.
Wyoming’s Game and Fish department is asking citizens to consider wolf management changes. Wolves in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho were under state management this management, until a federal judge rejected the feds proposed delisting.
Among other things, he didn’t like Wyoming’s management plan; which allows wolves to be shot or trapped as predators on one side of a state highway near Cody, and classified as trophy game on the other side.
Wyoming State Representative from District 50, Pat Childers said of the judge, “He had a real problem with the predator status.” Childers heads the committee that helped create Wyoming’s wolf plan. He said it was misunderstood by the judge. Childers explained, “The Game and Fish Commission has the right to move the boundary from Highway 120 to include all the state as trophy game.”
The lawmaker sought public explanations from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the state Attorney general. Childers committee held a hearing in Cody, and another in Riverton the next day. Now the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has released a draft revised version of it’s plan, to address court concerns, and will hold hearings across the state next week on it’s revised plan.
But, Childers says the Game and Fish Department will need new state laws to make the changes. He says that may not happen. He said, “We are most definitely justified in bringing a lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Interior about the way this whole wolf issue was handled.”
Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal said it’s too early to consider a lawsuit. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service public commend period on it’s proposal to delist Yellowstone area wolves ends November 28th.