Appeals court takes up wolf hunt

BILLINGS – With more than 150 gray wolves shot in the Northern Rockies so far this fall, a panel of federal judges meeting today will consider halting public wolf hunts until a lawsuit seeking to restore protections for the animals is resolved.

Congress cleared the way for the hunts last spring, when lawmakers took the unprecedented step of stripping Endangered Species Act protections from more than 1,300 wolves in Montana and Idaho.

Wildlife advocates sued to reverse the move and want the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to suspend the hunts. They claim Congress violated the Constitution’s separation of powers mandate by reversing prior court rulings that kept protections in place.

Montana set a 220-wolf quota for its hunt. Idaho’s hunt has no cap.

Prior requests for an emergency injunction against the hunts were denied. Now, more than two months after the states’ wolf seasons began, advocates will get the chance to make their case Tuesday before a three-judge panel. They said the killing is removing animals that are valuable to science and beloved by wolf watchers.

“They get a bad rap – they’re the big, bad wolves,” said Dave Hornoff with the National Wolfwatcher Coalition. “But you see them with their pups, you watch them raise their pups and you watch the pups grow up. You become very attached. Dying in this manner (hunting) is very hard to accept. It’s disheartening.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is monitoring the hunts, but agency officials said they have no plans to intervene because wolves have recovered in the region and the states have promised to manage them responsibly.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead recently struck a deal with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that could allow wolf hunting in that state as early as next year.

So far this year, wolves in Montana and Idaho have killed 152 cattle and calves, 108 sheep, 12 dogs and three horses, according to confirmed kill tallies provided by state and federal officials.

Even without hunting, wolves are shot regularly in the two states in response to livestock attacks. At least 103 of the predators had been killed through last week by government wildlife agents and ranchers.

If wolf numbers drop below 100 animals in either state, federal officials would step in to restore endangered species protections. That safety valve undercuts the plaintiffs’ contention that the hunts could cause irreparable harm, attorneys for the government contended in court documents filed in advance of the hearing.

The attorneys wrote that an injunction would be an extraordinary step for the court to take and that the plaintiffs “come nowhere close to meeting the test.”