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Wolves on verge of losing place on U.S. protection list
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to announce at around 12:30 p.m. today that that the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan have been removed from the federal endangered species list.
By Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune
After 33 years of federal protection, the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan appear poised to be removed from the federal endangered species list, a milestone in the animals' dramatic recovery across the Upper Midwest.
An Interior Department official has scheduled a news conference Monday to announce the status of the gray wolf in this region and in the northern Rocky Mountains.
Officials of the department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Endangered Species Act, refused on Friday to say what that announcement would be.
However, federal officials have been moving toward what is called "de-listing" gray wolves since early in this decade, when they first proposed doing so.
Wolves for decades had been listed as "threatened" in Minnesota and as "endangered" in all other states except Alaska. In 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified all wolves in the eastern half of the United States as "threatened" because their populations had recovered sufficiently in the western Great Lakes area.
In 2004, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove gray wolves in the eastern United States from the threatened list, allowing states and tribes with wolf populations on their lands to manage the wolves. A federal judge, in effect, threw out that plan, shrinking the proposed de-listing states to the three in the Upper Midwest.
Last March, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton took the penultimate step, declaring that the three-state region's wolves had sufficiently recovered from the threat of extinction to be removed from the list.
Wolf-recovery efforts "ensure the wolf is an enduring part of the landscape of the Upper Midwest," she said at the time.
Land of 3,000 wolves
For centuries, wolves in most of the lower 48 states were ferociously hunted and trapped even as their natural habitat shrank, plunging them toward extinction.
Roughly 4,000 of the animals live in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. By far the largest concentration is in Minnesota, where about 3,020 live in about 485 packs averaging between five and six wolves each. Their range is in central and northeastern Minnesota.
After Norton's announcement, the department had a year to make the decision final, with public comments made during the interim.
Ron Refsnider, the Fish and Wildlife Service's regional endangered-species listing coordinator, characterized the comments as "a real mix of opinion on de-listing the wolf or not."
In the wake of shrinking the size of the de-listed area, "we got more support for de-listing, including from a couple of environmental groups that had sued us last time around."
The federal government will monitor wolf numbers for five years after the de-listing, which would take effect 30 days after the final rule is published in the Federal Register. If, during that five-year period, the threat to wolves increases, the service would consider re-listing the species.
The Legislature in 2001 anticipated that control of Minnesota's wolves would someday return to the state and enacted a wolf-management plan that protects wolves while attempting to minimize possible harm to livestock.
The law stipulates that hunting and trapping wolves can't be a management option for at least five years after de-listing.
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to announce at around 12:30 p.m. today that that the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan have been removed from the federal endangered species list.
By Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune
After 33 years of federal protection, the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan appear poised to be removed from the federal endangered species list, a milestone in the animals' dramatic recovery across the Upper Midwest.
An Interior Department official has scheduled a news conference Monday to announce the status of the gray wolf in this region and in the northern Rocky Mountains.
Officials of the department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Endangered Species Act, refused on Friday to say what that announcement would be.
However, federal officials have been moving toward what is called "de-listing" gray wolves since early in this decade, when they first proposed doing so.
Wolves for decades had been listed as "threatened" in Minnesota and as "endangered" in all other states except Alaska. In 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified all wolves in the eastern half of the United States as "threatened" because their populations had recovered sufficiently in the western Great Lakes area.
In 2004, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove gray wolves in the eastern United States from the threatened list, allowing states and tribes with wolf populations on their lands to manage the wolves. A federal judge, in effect, threw out that plan, shrinking the proposed de-listing states to the three in the Upper Midwest.
Last March, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton took the penultimate step, declaring that the three-state region's wolves had sufficiently recovered from the threat of extinction to be removed from the list.
Wolf-recovery efforts "ensure the wolf is an enduring part of the landscape of the Upper Midwest," she said at the time.
Land of 3,000 wolves
For centuries, wolves in most of the lower 48 states were ferociously hunted and trapped even as their natural habitat shrank, plunging them toward extinction.
Roughly 4,000 of the animals live in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. By far the largest concentration is in Minnesota, where about 3,020 live in about 485 packs averaging between five and six wolves each. Their range is in central and northeastern Minnesota.
After Norton's announcement, the department had a year to make the decision final, with public comments made during the interim.
Ron Refsnider, the Fish and Wildlife Service's regional endangered-species listing coordinator, characterized the comments as "a real mix of opinion on de-listing the wolf or not."
In the wake of shrinking the size of the de-listed area, "we got more support for de-listing, including from a couple of environmental groups that had sued us last time around."
The federal government will monitor wolf numbers for five years after the de-listing, which would take effect 30 days after the final rule is published in the Federal Register. If, during that five-year period, the threat to wolves increases, the service would consider re-listing the species.
The Legislature in 2001 anticipated that control of Minnesota's wolves would someday return to the state and enacted a wolf-management plan that protects wolves while attempting to minimize possible harm to livestock.
The law stipulates that hunting and trapping wolves can't be a management option for at least five years after de-listing.
hump hump hump hump hump hump
