GRAY WOLVES - PROTECTED NO LONGER

GRAY WOLVES inhabiting the Northern Rockies will soon be removed from the endangered species list. This decision comes on the heels of a 13-year restoration effort which assisted in the flourishing of the animal’s population. Basically exterminated in the early 20th century from all the states except Alaska, an estimated 1,500 wolves now roam Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.

The wolf was virtually wiped out in the West because of a government eradication program in the 1930s, one which included widespread poisoning of wolves. In the late 1980s, the wolf was limited to just 200 square miles of territory around Glacier National Park, in Montana near the Canadian border. The government has spent more than $27 million on recovery efforts in the Northern Rockies since 1974 when wolves were listed as endangered. In view of the fact that an original 66 wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s, their population has grown swiftly. The area they wander now covers approximately 113,000 square miles.

“Gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains are thriving and no longer require the protection of the Endangered Species Act,” Interior Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett believes. “The wolf’s recovery in the Northern Rocky Mountains is a conservation success story.” Even so, the restoration effort has been criticized by ranchers and many others in the three states since its beginning. Wolves have increasingly preyed on livestock as they expanded into new territories. “We’ve been managing wolves pretty aggressively for livestock problems, but there are still a ton of wolves over a big area,” said Ed Bangs, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who led the wolf recovery effort. Since the late 1980s, 724 wolves have been killed legally, and around the same number have been killed illegally by poachers. In spite of that, the overall population has continued to grow at the rate of 24 percent a year.

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Some of the three states leaders want the population thinned significantly, and therefore are planning to allow hunters to target wolves as soon as this fall season. Not yet officially off the endangered list, wildlife agencies in the three states have already embarked on setting the rules for wolf hunts. Officials say the hunts will parallel those for other big game species such as mountain lions and black bears. Angered environmental groups are planning to sue over the delisting, saying it is too soon to remove federal protection. Environmentalists feel the government should instead begin restoration efforts in areas where the wolf is not yet established. “The enduring hostility to wolves still exists,” said Earthjustice attorney Doug Honnold, who is preparing the lawsuit. “We’re going to have hundreds of wolves killed under state management. It’s a sad day for our wolves.”

The limits on how many wolves allowed killed in each state has not yet been placed. Public hunting could considerably decrease the size of the wolf’s range. It could also lessen the likelihood of wolves spreading to neighboring states such as Utah, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. The western Great Lakes and the Southwest are the only other areas in the lower 48 where wolves continue to exist. Wolves surviving in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin were taken off the endangered list last year, while a reintroduced family of a dozen has struggled to increase in Arizona and New Mexico. Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resource Defense Council have filed a petition with the Department of Interior to enhance wolf populations by establishing animals in Maine, New York, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, Washington, New Hampshire, perhaps Texas, and sections of the mid-Atlantic.

There are no plans to reintroduce wolves into other states or regions, but hopefully the open-mindedness and patience toward wolves which has matured enormously since the species was nearly wiped out will keep this incredible creature thriving in America.

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