Toner News Mobile › Forums › Latest Industry News › WOLVES NO LONGER PORTECTED IN U.S. NORTHERN ROCKIES
- This topic has 0 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 9 years, 8 months ago by Anonymous.
-
AuthorPosts
-
AnonymousInactivehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090504/ap_on_re_us/us_wolves_recovered
Wolves no longer protected in northern Rockies
BILLINGS,
Mont. – Wolves in parts of the northern Rockies and the Great Lakes
region come off the endangered species list on Monday, opening them to
public hunts in some states for the first time in decades.Federal
officials say the population of gray wolves in those areas has
recovered and is large enough to survive on its own. The animals were
listed as endangered in 1974, after they had been wiped out across the
lower 48 states by hunting and government-sponsored poisoning.”We’ve
exceeded our recovery goals for nine consecutive years, and we fully
expect those trends will continue,” said Seth Willey, regional recovery
coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver.With
the delisting, state wildlife agencies will have full control over the
animals. States such as Idaho and Montana plan to resume hunting the
animals this fall, but no hunting has been proposed in the Great Lakes
region.Ranchers and livestock groups, particularly in the Rockies, have
pushed to strip the endangered status in hopes that hunting will keep
the population in check.About 300 wolves in Wyoming will remain on the
list because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the state’s
plan for a “predator zone” where wolves could be shot on sight. Wyoming
Gov. Dave Freudenthal and a coalition of livestock and hunting groups
have announced a lawsuit against the federal government over the
decision.Freudenthal, a Democrat, claimed “political
expediency” was behind the rejection of his state’s wolf plan.Wolves
were taken off the endangered list in the northern Rockies — including
Wyoming — for about five months last year. After environmentalists
sued, a federal judge in Montana restored the protections and cited
Wyoming’s predator zone as a main reason. In the Great Lakes, the
animal was off the list beginning in 2007 until a judge in Washington
last September ordered them protected again.Environmental and
animal rights groups have also said they planned to sue over the
delisting, claiming that there are still not enough wolves to guarantee
their survival. The groups point to Idaho’s plan to kill up to 100
wolves believed to have killed elk.”We understand that hunting is part
of wildlife policy in the West,” said Anne Carlson with the Western
Wolf Coalition. “(But) wolves should be managed like native wildlife
and not as pests to be exterminated.”The delisting review began
under the administration of President George W. Bush and the proposal
was upheld by President Barack Obama’s administration after an internal
review. In a recent letter to several members of Congress, Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar wrote that he was “confident that science
justifies the delisting of the gray wolf.”Willey said his agency
projected there would be between 973 and 1302 wolves in the northern
Rockies under state management, a number well above the 300 wolves set
as the original benchmark for the animal’s recovery.More than 1,300
wolves roam the mountains of Montana and Idaho and an estimated 4,000
live in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota -
AuthorMay 6, 2009 at 12:16 PM
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.