Wolf off endangered list in Northern Rockies

BILLINGS, Mont. — Wolves in parts of the Northern Rockies and the Great Lakes region come off the endangered species list today — opening the way for public hunting of the animals to begin in some states this fall. But prior attempts to remove federal protection for the predators have been rejected by judges and new legal challenges are certain. Gray wolves were listed as endangered in 1974, after they had been wiped out across the lower 48 states by hunting and government-sponsored poisoning. Today more than 1,300 wolves roam the mountains of Montana and Idaho. An estimated 4,000 live in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Federal officials say the threat of extinction has passed and the population is large enough to survive on its own — even with plans to resume hunting in Idaho and Montana this fall. “We’ve exceeded our recovery goals for nine consecutive years, and we fully expect those trends will continue,” said Seth Willey, regional recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver. About 300 wolves in Wyoming will remain on the list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the state’s plan for a “predator zone” where wolves could be shot on sight across 88 percent of the state. Elsewhere, the loss of federal protections means state wildlife agencies will have full control over the animals. No hunting has been proposed in the Great Lakes states. But even there, environmental and animal rights groups say there are still not enough wolves to guarantee their survival. They’ve already notified the government they’ll file a lawsuit over the issue — a tactic that’s proven successful in the past. To back up their claim that state officials are intent on driving down wolf numbers, the groups point to Idaho’s plan to kill up to 100 wolves blamed for culling elk herds in the north central part of the state. “We understand that hunting is part of wildlife policy in the West,” said Anne Carlson with the Western Wolf Coalition. “(But) wolves should be managed like native wildlife and not as pests to be exterminated.” Meanwhile, ranchers and livestock groups, particularly in the Rockies, have pushed hard to strip the wolf of its endangered status in hopes that hunting will keep the population in check. As more of the predators have moved out of remote wilderness and into agricultural areas, livestock killings have become routine. Monday’s action caps a process that began under the administration of President George W. Bush. The Obama administration upheld the Bush proposal after an internal review, disappointing environmentalists and some in Congress who had hoped for a reversal. In a recent letter to several members of Congress, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote that he was “confident that science justifies the delisting of the gray wolf.” In Wyoming, the governor and a coalition of livestock and hunting groups are planning their own lawsuit against the federal government over its decision to leave the state’s wolves listed. In a notice sent to Interior announcing his intent to sue, Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, claimed “political expediency” was behind the rejection of his state’s wolf plan. Wolves were taken off the endangered list in the Northern Rockies — including Wyoming — for about five months last year. After environmentalists sued, a federal judge in Montana restored the protections and cited Wyoming’s predator zone as a main reason. In the Great Lakes, the animal was off the list beginning in 2007 until a judge in Washington last September ordered them back on. Willey, the USFWS species recovery coordinator, said his agency projects there will be between 973 and 1302 wolves in the Northern Rockies under state management. That’s a 20-40 percent reduction, but still well above the 300 wolves set as the original benchmark for the animal’s recovery. The Endangered Species Act mandates that the federal government monitor the animal’s population for five years after it is delisted. Salazar has pledged to review its endangered status if problems emerge. The federal government has spent almost $30 million restoring wolves in the Northern Rockies. No comparable figure was available for the Great Lakes.