BUSH ORDERED TO SAVE THE GRAY WOLF

[Anonymous]

Judge Orders Northeast Wolf Restoration
The ruling covers the restoration of the gray wolf in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York state.        

MONTPELIER, Vt. (Aug. 05)
– A federal judge Friday ordered the Bush administration to step up
efforts to restore the gray wolf to four northeastern states, a ruling
environmentalists called a major victory.

“The wolves are howlin”‘ in celebration, said Patrick Parenteau, director of the environmental law clinic at Vermont Law School.

Judge J. Garvan Murtha found that the Department of the Interior
violated federal law in 2003 when it issued a rule saying no further
efforts to restore the wolf were needed. The ruling covers Maine, New
Hampshire, Vermont and New York state.

Efforts to restore wolves had been successful in Minnesota, Wisconsin
and Michigan. The government wanted to lump those states in with the
Northeast in a new, 21-state eastern region, and declare that enough
had been done to restore wolf populations throughout the eastern United
States.

Anthony Tur, a Fish and Wildlife Service field officer in Concord,
N.H., said the agency’s headquarters in Washington would decide whether
to appeal the ruling.

He questioned the push to build gray wolf populations in the Northeast
on two fronts, saying it wasn’t clear that the public would support
such a move and there was dispute in the scientific community about
whether gray wolves ever populated the region.

Environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation and
state groups in Vermont, Maine and New York, joined in the lawsuit.
They argued that good wolf habitats exist in northern Maine and in New
York’s Adirondack Mountains, and that northern Vermont and New
Hampshire likely would become an important corridor for wolves
migrating between those two habitats.

Parenteau, lead attorney in the case, said his students “did all the
hard labor in the case. It’s a nice victory for our students.”

[Author]

August 23, 2005 at 7:04 AM