Wolf's Future in Wyoming, as Predator or Fragile Species, Is in Court's Hands
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: February 5, 2005
CHEYENNE, Wyo., Feb. 4 - Gray wolves have thrived in the West since their reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park 10 years ago last month. No one disputes that. There is also broad agreement among federal wildlife officials, ranchers and conservationists that the time is ripe to remove the protections of the Endangered Species Act under which the wolves made their comeback.
Just one thing stands in the way, they all say: The State of Wyoming. Not that Wyoming loves wolves and wants them nurtured and protected by the government - far from it - but rather that the state and federal government have been unable to agree about what sort of wildlife management the wolves need or do not need as they become more established.
The state argues that wolves are predators across much of Wyoming where they now roam and should be treated as such - residents should be allowed to shoot them at will, like other varmints. Federal wildlife officials said the state's plan is a recipe for annihilation of a still-fragile species and that until Wyoming comes up with a more wolf-friendly plan, the Endangered Species Act, which protects the wolves as experimental, nonessential species, will continue to apply.
Wolf-management plans in Montana and Idaho have been approved by the wildlife service. Only Wyoming, where the removal of federal wolf protection has been an official state goal for years, stands in the way, federal officials say.
The standoff played out here on Friday in Federal District Court, where the ostensible topic was narrow and lawyerly - how the Fish and Wildlife Service makes its procedural rulings. The state asked Judge Alan Johnson to order Fish and Wildlife officials to accept Wyoming's wolf plan. Lawyers for the wildlife service said they could not do that. Judge Johnson said he would rule later.
But as Wyoming's attorney general, Pat Crank, argued in his remarks to Judge Johnson, the situation with wolves in the West is not like other conservation stories.
Wolves, he said, are predators that feed on the deer and elk that hunters pay for licenses to shoot and the cattle and sheep that ranchers make their living from, creating financial hardships that government cannot walk away from.
Unless Wyoming's plan is accepted, he said, "we are out of the wolf- management business, and we will have an unchecked wolf population until God knows when."
Conservationists and wolf experts agree that the unique trajectory of wolves back into the West has complicated the story immensely. Wolves - unlike, say, bald eagles, which were nurtured back from the brink - were deliberately reintroduced by the federal government into an area from which they had long since disappeared. That means the return of the wolf and the attitudes about government have been intertwined from the moment the first 14 wolves were brought from Canada and set free in Yellowstone.
In Wyoming, many people say, being anti-wolf and being anti-federal government are like bread and butter or chips and salsa, each incomplete without the other.
"It's become a rallying cry - here's one more thing the federal government did to us," said Douglas Smith, the Yellowstone wolf project leader at Yellowstone National Park. Mr. Smith said in a telephone interview that wolves and politics are always tied together.
The politics beyond Wyoming have also come into play as other states watch what happens with the wolf lawsuit.
Some people in neighboring states like Montana and Idaho that passed more wolf-friendly management plans are angry at Wyoming for gumming up the works of getting the federal government out of the wolf business. Others say that if Wyoming wins its suit and its most-wolves-can-be-killed plan goes into effect, people here will have bucked the government, and the wolves, as perhaps only Wyoming can.
"There's some support for Wyoming, that people should tell the feds to shove it and go down fighting - the Old West kind of thing," said Ed Bangs, the national wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service. "On the other hand, some people say, 'We never thought that Wyoming would be the one to successfully sabotage the delisting of wolves.' People thought it would be the extreme pro-wolf groups - that it would be the ones that hate wolves most is sort of startling to people."
But there are also tangled issues with wolf management, Wyoming state officials and conservationists say, that come from the animal's very success in re-exploiting its former range in the Rocky Mountain region.
With perhaps 800 or so animals now in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, Wyoming officials argue that the wolf is not only re-established, but in danger of becoming unchecked in its numbers. In other words, they say, the need for any sort of handholding in wolf recovery is over. It is time for management, they say, that is neither misty eyed nor romantic nor intended to increase wolf numbers.
People who were involved in the reintroduction in 1995 say that everyone was taken by surprise at how fast and how well wolves roared back. Mike Phillips, who was the project leader at Yellowstone in the early years, said he believes the first 14 animals might well have been enough to repopulate much of the West. A second batch of 17 wolves released in 1996 probably was not even needed, he now believes.
"Restoration was the easy part," he said in an interview. "The challenge is coexistence."
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: February 5, 2005
CHEYENNE, Wyo., Feb. 4 - Gray wolves have thrived in the West since their reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park 10 years ago last month. No one disputes that. There is also broad agreement among federal wildlife officials, ranchers and conservationists that the time is ripe to remove the protections of the Endangered Species Act under which the wolves made their comeback.
Just one thing stands in the way, they all say: The State of Wyoming. Not that Wyoming loves wolves and wants them nurtured and protected by the government - far from it - but rather that the state and federal government have been unable to agree about what sort of wildlife management the wolves need or do not need as they become more established.
The state argues that wolves are predators across much of Wyoming where they now roam and should be treated as such - residents should be allowed to shoot them at will, like other varmints. Federal wildlife officials said the state's plan is a recipe for annihilation of a still-fragile species and that until Wyoming comes up with a more wolf-friendly plan, the Endangered Species Act, which protects the wolves as experimental, nonessential species, will continue to apply.
Wolf-management plans in Montana and Idaho have been approved by the wildlife service. Only Wyoming, where the removal of federal wolf protection has been an official state goal for years, stands in the way, federal officials say.
The standoff played out here on Friday in Federal District Court, where the ostensible topic was narrow and lawyerly - how the Fish and Wildlife Service makes its procedural rulings. The state asked Judge Alan Johnson to order Fish and Wildlife officials to accept Wyoming's wolf plan. Lawyers for the wildlife service said they could not do that. Judge Johnson said he would rule later.
But as Wyoming's attorney general, Pat Crank, argued in his remarks to Judge Johnson, the situation with wolves in the West is not like other conservation stories.
Wolves, he said, are predators that feed on the deer and elk that hunters pay for licenses to shoot and the cattle and sheep that ranchers make their living from, creating financial hardships that government cannot walk away from.
Unless Wyoming's plan is accepted, he said, "we are out of the wolf- management business, and we will have an unchecked wolf population until God knows when."
Conservationists and wolf experts agree that the unique trajectory of wolves back into the West has complicated the story immensely. Wolves - unlike, say, bald eagles, which were nurtured back from the brink - were deliberately reintroduced by the federal government into an area from which they had long since disappeared. That means the return of the wolf and the attitudes about government have been intertwined from the moment the first 14 wolves were brought from Canada and set free in Yellowstone.
In Wyoming, many people say, being anti-wolf and being anti-federal government are like bread and butter or chips and salsa, each incomplete without the other.
"It's become a rallying cry - here's one more thing the federal government did to us," said Douglas Smith, the Yellowstone wolf project leader at Yellowstone National Park. Mr. Smith said in a telephone interview that wolves and politics are always tied together.
The politics beyond Wyoming have also come into play as other states watch what happens with the wolf lawsuit.
Some people in neighboring states like Montana and Idaho that passed more wolf-friendly management plans are angry at Wyoming for gumming up the works of getting the federal government out of the wolf business. Others say that if Wyoming wins its suit and its most-wolves-can-be-killed plan goes into effect, people here will have bucked the government, and the wolves, as perhaps only Wyoming can.
"There's some support for Wyoming, that people should tell the feds to shove it and go down fighting - the Old West kind of thing," said Ed Bangs, the national wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service. "On the other hand, some people say, 'We never thought that Wyoming would be the one to successfully sabotage the delisting of wolves.' People thought it would be the extreme pro-wolf groups - that it would be the ones that hate wolves most is sort of startling to people."
But there are also tangled issues with wolf management, Wyoming state officials and conservationists say, that come from the animal's very success in re-exploiting its former range in the Rocky Mountain region.
With perhaps 800 or so animals now in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, Wyoming officials argue that the wolf is not only re-established, but in danger of becoming unchecked in its numbers. In other words, they say, the need for any sort of handholding in wolf recovery is over. It is time for management, they say, that is neither misty eyed nor romantic nor intended to increase wolf numbers.
People who were involved in the reintroduction in 1995 say that everyone was taken by surprise at how fast and how well wolves roared back. Mike Phillips, who was the project leader at Yellowstone in the early years, said he believes the first 14 animals might well have been enough to repopulate much of the West. A second batch of 17 wolves released in 1996 probably was not even needed, he now believes.
"Restoration was the easy part," he said in an interview. "The challenge is coexistence."
