State seeks to cull 75 percent of wolf pack

BOISE – Idaho wildlife officials on Tuesday formally asked the federal government for authority to kill most of the gray wolves in a pack roaming along the Montana border. Idaho believes the pack is decimating an elk herd.

The state submitted a proposal to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that seeks permission to kill as many as 43 of the estimated 58 wolves in a pack roaming the Lolo Pass and Clearwater River Basin area of north-central Idaho. After eliminating that many wolves in the first year of the plan, state game managers would continue to kill more wolves over the next four years to keep the Lolo pack no larger than 14 to 23 wolves.

Jim Unsworth, the Idaho Fish and Game Department’s wildlife bureau chief, said killing the wolves is critical to rescuing the dwindling wild elk herd in the popular Lolo hunting zone.

“The current predation rate on adult cow elk by wolves is not allowing the herd to bounce back to previous population levels,” he said. “We believe the habitat conditions would allow for higher elk populations if the wolf population was not at its current level.”

Federal officials said they would begin a scientific review of the state’s proposal to determine if the first lethal control of an animal classified under the Endangered Species Act was warranted.

“This is unprecedented, but it is not unforeseen,” Jeff Foss, Fish and Wildlife’s Boise field office supervisor, said after meeting with state officials to receive the proposal Tuesday afternoon.

At the urging of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, now President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Interior secretary, the federal government in January turned over to the state day-to-day management of the wolves reintroduced in central Idaho in 1995 as an “experimental, nonessential population” under the Endangered Species Act. Wolves located north of Interstate 90 in the Idaho Panhandle remain classified as an endangered species under the act and are still under the control of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

But the agreement signed in January by Kempthorne and outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton gave the state primary management responsibility for the estimated 512 gray wolves living south of I-90 in the rugged Idaho Rockies.

The state’s application on Tuesday is the first test of just how far that responsibility extends. Under a rule in the Endangered Species Act revised by the Bush administration last year, the state can ask for the federal government’s permission to kill wolves that are causing “unacceptable impacts” to wild elk, deer and moose.

Before the 2005 revision, only trapping and relocation of problem wolves was allowed.

Now, the federal agency will review the state’s proposal to determine if the rationale behind the planned wolf killing is scientifically valid, whether the data the state has collected on elk herd numbers justifies wolf removal, how the elk herd’s response to the reduction of wolves will be measured and whether eliminating 75 percent of the pack would put the wolf population below minimum recovery levels.

Members of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission were told at their meeting last month federal review could take several months and would likely result in a federal lawsuit from conservationists who oppose the state’s plan.