Coalition opposes wolf delisting

It’s too soon to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species List, says a coalition of environmental and animal rights groups that plans to sue the federal government over the matter.

The groups, including the Sierra Club and the Humane Society, on Wednesday notified the Department of Interior that they’ll file a lawsuit. Sixty days’ notice is required under the Endangered Species Act.

The coalition says the estimated 1,500 wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are too few to ensure the species’ survival, particularly given that the three states intend to allow hunting of wolves beginning this fall.

Federal officials disagree, noting that the population has grown rapidly since 1995 and 1996, when a few wolves from Canada were reintroduced into central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. The population continues to grow at a rate of about 20 percent a year, Interior Department officials said last week, when announcing plans to delist the Northern Rockies population as soon as late March.

State officials have pledged to keep wolves on the landscape. But they want to let hunters kill possibly hundreds of wolves, in part to reduce conflicts with livestock and big game.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission will meet next week in Boise to discuss a proposed hunting season, starting this fall, with a goal of maintaining between 518 and 732 animals.

Details of the season won’t be completed until May. State officials want the flexibility to kill more wolves in areas where they frequently prey on livestock, said Steve Nadeau, Idaho’s large-carnivore manager.

Though North Idaho isn’t one of those areas, “we’ll probably have some level of hunting in the Panhandle,” he said.

In the Idaho Panhandle, biologists have documented eight packs, with about 40 wolves total.

Absent from the list of groups suing to prevent delisting is the 9,000-member Idaho Conservation League. The group, which is prominent in Idaho, has said that it supports delisting.