From the Missoulian . . .
Strongly disagreeing with his own decision, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy on Wednesday upheld a congressional rider removing gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protection.
Barring a successful appeal, the decision means wolves are delisted in Montana and Idaho, and those states may go ahead with their scheduled wolf hunting seasons this fall.
Related story: Groups to appeal wolf ruling to 9th Circuit
From an AP article posted in today’s Flathead Beacon . . .
Hunters will be able to shoot as many as 220 gray wolves in Montana this fall under rules adopted Thursday by state wildlife commissioners.
The hunt is scheduled to begin in early September and is expected to reduce the predator’s Montana population by about 25 percent to 425 wolves.
A wolf hunt is also planned in Idaho, where officials have not proposed statewide harvest targets or quotas.
Wolves were taken off the endangered species list in an unprecedented move by Congress this spring in Montana, Idaho and parts of Utah, Washington and Oregon.
A good summary of the science and opinion behind the debate on wolf recovery numbers from yesterday’s Missoulian . . .
One of the biggest arguments left unresolved by last year’s wolf lawsuit was the most obvious: How many wolves are enough?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took the gray wolf off the endangered species list in 2009, with the caveat that at least 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs endure in each of the three states in the northern Rocky Mountain population (Montana, Idaho and Wyoming).
Recent surveys found at least 1,700 wolves in that area – more than enough to justify delisting.
But a coalition of environmental groups sued the government, claiming those numbers were wrong. To survive and thrive, they argued, the population needed at least 2,000 and preferably 5,000 wolves.
Here’s a short Associated Press article covering both of the two lawsuits filed today opposing congressional removal of gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protection . . .
Environmental groups asked a federal judge Thursday to put gray wolves back on the endangered species list in the Northern Rockies.
Two lawsuits were filed in federal court in Montana as control over more than 1,300 wolves was turned over to state authorities in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Utah.
A federal budget bill rider in April had mandated Thursday’s lifting of wolf protections.
As expected, a number of environmental groups filed suit in federal court today challenging congressional removal of gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protection. Here is the Missoulian’s write-up on one of the two suits . . .
A trio of wolf advocates claim Congress violated the Separation of Powers Doctrine when it removed gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protection and blocked future court review.
“We will not allow the fate of endangered species to be determined by politicians serving special interests,” Alliance for the Wild Rockies director Michael Garrity said in an email Thursday morning. “These decisions must be based on science, not politics, and Congress has never before removed species from the endangered species list by political fiat.”
AWR was joined by Friends of the Clearwater and WildEarth Guardians in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Missoula.
As of yesterday, wolf managment has been returned to state control in Montana and Idaho. Here is the Daily Inter Lake’s take on the subject . . .
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule Wednesday that officially removes wolves in Montana and Idaho from the Endangered Species list.
The rule comes on the heels of Congressional action that compelled delisting.
“We are implementing the recent legislation that directs the delisting of the gray wolf in most of the northern Rocky Mountains,” Interior Deputy Secretary David Hayes said in a prepared statement. “As with other delisted species, we will be applying the Endangered Species Act’s post-delisting monitoring requirements to ensure that wolf populations remain robust while under state wildlife management.”
This too-short Associated Press article claims that, besides returning management of gray wolves to state control in the Northern Rockies, the Obama administration proposes to do the same for a further 4200 wolves in the Great Lakes region . . .
The Obama administration says it is lifting Endangered Species Act protections for 5,500 wolves in eight states in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes.
The move will turn control over the predators to state wildlife agencies. Public hunts for hundreds of wolves already are planned this fall in Idaho and Montana.
Here’s a good article from today’s Missoulian on the imminent delisting of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies . . .
Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves officially return to state control Thursday, when their removal from Endangered Species Act protection is published in the Federal Register.
That means Montana and Idaho hunters will be back in the business of controlling wolf populations this fall. A bipartisan rider in the 2011 federal budget bill ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reinstate its 2009 wolf delisting decision and immunized it from further court challenges.
An interesting retrospective on Ed Bangs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf recovery coordinator for the northern Rockies, who will be retiring in June . . .
Ed Bangs, who for 23 years led the effort to reintroduce and recover healthy wolf populations in the northern Rocky Mountains, is retiring from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in June.
As the federal agency’s wolf recovery coordinator, Bangs was the face of the polarizing wolf reintroduction, conducting thousands of international, national, state and local interviews and holding hundreds of highly charged meetings, all to explain the effort as part of a massive public outreach effort.
At various times, depending on the stage of the reintroduction, he was heralded as a hero while simultaneously being denounced as a wolf lover or hater, depending on people’s perspective.
From a recent email sent out by Janet Barwick, NRDC Montana Wildlife Advocate . . .
Senate Bill 414, the Montana Wolf Control Act, has been voted down in the Montana House. This bill would have made it legal to shoot wolves on private land, at any time, even without a hunting license, endangering the hard fought recovery of wolves in the Northern Rockies. It is highly unlikely that there will be a revision of this bill before the legislature recesses on April 30th, and unlikely that it will come up again in the special session slated for June.