U.S. Loses Ruling on Gray Wolves

[southernman]

[black][size 4]U.S. Loses Ruling on Gray Wolves[/size][/black] [url "http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/addtomy/*http://add.my.yahoo.com/content?id=6200&.src=yn&.done=http%3a//news.yahoo.com/news%3ftmpl=story%26cid=624%26ncid=753%26e=1%26u=/ap/20050201/ap_on_sc/wolf_ruling"][/url]
By JEFF BARNARD, Associated Press Writer

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - [font "Arial"][black][size 3]A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Bush administration violated the Endangered Species Act when it relaxed protections on many of the nation's gray wolves. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones in Portland rescinds a rule change that allowed ranchers to shoot wolves on sight if they were attacking livestock, said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]In April 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service divided the wolves' range into three areas and reclassified the Eastern and Western populations as threatened instead of endangered. The Eastern segment covers the area from the Dakotas east to Maine, while the Western segment extends west from the Dakotas. The agency left wolves in the Southwest classified as endangered. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]But the judge ruled that the government acted improperly by combining areas where wolves were doing well, such as Montana, with places where their numbers had not recovered. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]"Interior Secretary Gale Norton tried to gerrymander the entire contiguous 48 states so that wolves in a few areas would make up for the absence of wolves in much larger regions," Robinson said. "Now, instead of drawing lines on the map based on political considerations, any future lines must be based on science." [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]The judge also found that Fish and Wildlife did not consider certain factors listed in the Endangered Species Act in evaluating the wolf's status, including threats from disease, predators or other natural or manmade dangers. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]Fish and Wildlife expressed disappointment in the ruling. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]"We believe our rule provided for biologically sound management of the core population of wolves in areas where we knew they could thrive as stable viable populations," the agency said in a statement. "We also believe the rule was correct as a matter of law under the Endangered Species Act." [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]Mike Senatore, vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, said the ruling would make it more difficult for the Bush administration to reduce or eliminate Endangered Species Act protection for other species. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]Practically speaking, only wolves in northwestern Montana were affected by the rule change that allowed ranchers to shoot wolves on sight, said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service. The rule never extended to experimental populations in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Idaho and the rest of Montana, and no packs have been established in other states in the region, Bangs said. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]"We haven't had a wolf killed by a private citizen defending private property since the new rule went into effect," Bangs said. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]By the 1970s, wolves had been virtually wiped out in the Lower 48 states to protect livestock. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]Gray wolves were reintroduced in and around Yellowstone in 1995 and 1996, and federal wildlife officials have declared their recovery a success. Officials estimate there are now more than 800 wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, including Yellowstone National Park. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]In the Eastern sector, there are an estimated 3,200 wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Arial"][black][size 3]A small number of Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced in the Southwest in 1998. [/size][/black][/font]
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[Icedaddy22]

The fact of the matter is that the ESA is in most instances a grave threat to our fishing and hunting opportunities. The USFWS is an organization that caters to extreme environmental groups and makes all decisions regarding endangered animals in an arbtirary and capricous manner, many that cannot be recovered and never lived in the supposed "habitat" to begin with.
For instance, in Colorado, wolves historically never had a hold here. There was a small pack or two in the northeastern part of the state. Now the squawfish klan, er, FWS, wants to reintroduce wolves into a state in which they never had a hold.
The FWS neglects the fact that the ecosystems in which they try to reintroduce species are drastically changed. They are no longer the same but are treated the same.
It is a fact that the ESA has totally recovered exactly 0 species. The ESA is simply a tool that environmental extremists invoke to control our lives and to halt development that is not harmful and is done with great care, such as drilling in "rare desert" habitat or the arctic wildlife refuge. But mostly, it is the most liberty infringing law since the quickly repealed alien and sedition acts. The agency enforcing it, the USFWS, is the most corrupt and tyrannical government around. Everything they do is heavy handed.
I support the recovery of MOST endangered species. However the continued harassment of people who shoot wolves or grizzly bears that are attacking their livestock, on attacking them in the case of bears.
I think the ESA should be in line for huge budget cuts. Look at the facts, it plain and simply does not accomplish what it set out to do.

Tyler
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[southernman]

the arguments realy polarize people, nobody wants to see a species wiped out, or somebodys livestock either . . . tough one




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[BEARCLAW]

Protection of wolves could bring backlash
BY DAN EGAN

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


MILWAUKEE - (KRT) - Conservation groups were overjoyed last week when a federal judge ruled in their favor that the gray wolf should be put back on the endangered species list in most states, but one of the world's foremost authorities on wolf biology frets that their victory might come back to bite them.
The ruling means that wildlife officials in almost every northern state, including Wisconsin, will no longer be able to kill wolves that develop a taste for livestock or otherwise become a menace. The goal in providing such protections, of course, is to pull a beleaguered species back from the brink of extinction.
But Wisconsin's wolf population is thriving. The federal recovery goal was a combined population of 100 in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Today, there are more than 700, which biologists say is probably more than the Wisconsin and UP North Woods can support; 24 nuisance wolves were trapped and destroyed in Wisconsin last year, and wolves spilling south have already been killed on I-94 near Milwaukee, and a few have met their demise as far south as Illinois, Indiana and Missouri.
The question is no longer whether the wolf can recover. The question now is whether humans can learn to live with it, and renowned wolf biologist David Mech says the no-kill rule for problem wolves in a place such as Dairyland could actually spell trouble for the wolf everywhere. If cow-attacking wolves can't be destroyed, he says, the bad actors could cost the entire species its tenuous public relations revival.
"I like to compare it with something like the bison," said Mech, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Service. "We could have bison all over the place too, but they'd be running into cars and through wheat fields. With all these species, you have to have some control on their numbers."
The court case that tossed the wolf back onto the endangered species list is as much about bureaucracy as it is about biology.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has carved on the nation's map three distinct wolf populations - a Southwestern population, a Western population and an Eastern population. The Eastern area stretches from the Dakotas to Maine and includes Wisconsin.
Recognizing the strides Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan had made in bringing back the wolf, in spring of 2003 the Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the wolf from the endangered species list in the Eastern recovery zone and designated it as threatened, one notch up the recovery ladder.
Unlike "endangered" wolves, "threatened" wolves can, in some cases, be killed for getting in the way of humans trying to make a living.
But the problem, according to conservationists, is that Fish and Wildlife's "downlisting" order for the Eastern zone, driven by the success in the Midwest, also lifted the no-kill protections in New England states where suitable wolf habitat exists but the animal still needs every bit of help the government can offer.
Fish and Wildlife's 2003 rule also changed the wolf's endangered status in much of the Western recovery zone. Because of its recovery in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, the agency upgraded the wolf from endangered to threatened across the entire region.
Conservationists pounced on the 2003 ruling, arguing in court that the sweeping downlistings for the Eastern and Western zones would kill any chance for wolf recovery not only in the Northeast, but also in northern California, Oregon and elsewhere in the West.
Last week, Federal District Judge Robert Jones sided with the 19 conservation groups that took the case to into his Portland, Ore., courtroom.
"Today's decision shows that the Bush administration is not a true partner when it comes to species conservation, that they only want to remove species protections as quickly as possible, regardless of what the science shows," declared Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.
DNR caught off-guard Fish and Wildlife responded to the ruling the next day by telling Wisconsin DNR officials to stop its wolf-killing program until attorneys can sort through the legal ramifications of the ruling.
"It's unfortunate," says Ron Refsnider, Fish and Wildlife's regional endangered species listing coordinator. "We felt we'd done it (the downlisting) all properly and under all the rules and regulations."
DNR officials were caught off-guard by last week's orders to stop killing problem wolves.
In the 22 months since the wolf was moved from endangered to threatened, wildlife officials in Wisconsin have killed 41 problem animals, said Adrian Wydeven, head of the DNR's wolf recovery program.
Before the 2003 downlisting, the only tool Wisconsin had to manage problem wolves was to trap them and release them somewhere else.
Wydeven says that is what the state will have to do now that the judge has declared the species endangered again, but he worries there are few places remaining where a transported wolf will be able to make it on its own because state forests are virtually filled with them.
In some cases, existing wolf packs in an area attack and kill a transplanted animal. In others, it's human hostility that dooms a transplanted wolf.
Wydeven says several Wisconsin counties, including Oconto, Taylor and Lincoln, have passed rules or resolutions that prohibit the DNR from transporting wolves across their boundaries. Wydeven says counties don't have the legal authority to ban the DNR from moving wolves, but his department gets the message nonetheless - marauding wolves are wearing out their welcome in the state.
He said that last year eight wolves were illegally shot in Wisconsin. In 2002, the last year Wisconsin could not kill problem wolves, the number of illegal killings was double that.
Conservationists are thrilled with what the ruling means for wolves on a national level, but nobody is happy about what it means now for Wisconsin. Not the farmers who have to live with wolves prowling the pastures. Not the biologists who have made careers out of restoring the predator to the top of the food chain. Not even some of the organizations that liberally use the wolf's image to stir public passions - and donations - for their conservationist agendas.
"The Great Lakes states got caught up in the national rule, and frankly got kind of held back by the fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had lumped Great Lakes states, which do have healthy wolf populations, together with the Northeast, which does not have any wolves," said Nina Fascione, a vice president for Defenders of Wildlife. "Wisconsin has done a good job, and I'd be supportive of Wisconsin being able to play a greater role in management of the state's wolves, but that won't happen now."
The timing of the ruling is particularly stinging to Wisconsin biologists, because this was the year when three decades of recovery efforts were finally supposed to pay off with the wolf being removed altogether from the federal threatened and endangered lists and its management turned over entirely to the state.
The species was first listed as endangered in 1974, the year after passage of the Endangered Species Act. The crux of the federal plan to bring the king of the carnivores back to the deer-rich state forests was remarkably simple: Do nothing.
Doing nothing meant, most importantly, not killing wolves that roamed over from Minnesota, which, unlike Wisconsin, never completely lost its wolf population in aggressive hunts in the previous century. Minnesota's wolves, which have been listed as threatened since 1978, were not affected by last week's ruling.
In 1973, Wisconsin had zero wolves. It had 25 by 1980, and 248 by 2000. Today, there are more than 370 wolves roaming the state and a similar number in the Upper Peninsula.
The relatively smooth natural recovery in this region occurred in stark contrast to controversy it sparked in the Western states, where wolves were plucked from Canada and transplanted into the wilds of central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in an exercise many perceived as more about federal muscle-flexing than wildlife biology.
"What separates the northern Great Lakes from many other places is that wolves walked back here - we didn't reintroduce them," says Pam Troxell, of Ashland's Timber Wolf Alliance. "There really was no human control, except protection."
Some fear the judge's ruling has endangered Wisconsin's wolf population - not just legally, but literally.
"Because the wolf is a top predator, it is a very controversial species and when it causes damage, which it does, it engenders very strong feelings," says Signe Holtz, director of the DNR's endangered resources bureau. "As a result, we in the DNR feel very strongly that we want to be able to manage those conflicts between humans and wolves, and by managing them I believe we build more support for having wolves as part of the natural world in Wisconsin."
Representatives of the farming industry see problems ahead.
"I don't think this is going to help wolf recovery," Eric Koens, board member for the Wisconsin Cattlemen's Association. "It's going to harm recovery because it's going to create so much animosity."
"There is going to be a greater burden on Wisconsin," acknowledges conservationist Fascione.
Fascione said the solution is for Fish and Wildlife to designate Upper Great Lakes wolves as a distinct population. That, she explained, could reopen the door to killing problem wolves in this region, without relaxing protection measures in Northeastern states.
But federal bureaucracies are as lumbering as wolves are nimble, and some predict the fur will be flying soon if something isn't done.
"There is going to be more illegal action in taking wolves," predicted Koens. "I don't think that would be a surprise to anybody."
Biologist Mech looks at the big picture, and he doesn't like what he sees, not just for wolves in Wisconsin, but for wildlife recovery efforts across the country.
"I worry about backlashes, in terms of Congress," said Mech. "Will this make Congress more apt to want to modify the Endangered Species Act?"
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[Icedaddy22]

The ESA needs to be repealed or modified. Bruce Babbit, former environmentalist extremist secretary of the interior under William Jefferson Klinton, laughed at people who wanted to repeal the ESA, saying "don't try, the public is too much in favor of it."
He is right when he says the public is in favor of it, almost 80%. However the public is not educated on the matter and doesn't know that the ESA has recovered exactly 0 species. Only four or five have even been downlisted.
The ESA as currently practiced is wrong because it is too heavy handed, and allows the USFWS to "mandate" actions, no matter what the public says. So species that the public doesn't want recovered, such as the Colorado River Trash Fish, because they threaten our way of life, and other species that are not even really genetically discernable from other very common ones.
People lose land without compensation, and there is little recourse or due process to those the ESA harms. Most of the "science" used in the ESA is biased and twisted to fit the USFWS and other radical agendas of environmental groups.
So what is the solution? I think it's more obtainable than most people think. The ESA can either be repealed or amended by simply educating the public to the cold hard facts that is has never recovered a single species. Educate the public that all it does is take land, rape rivers, kill sport fish, and other draconian measures in "critical habitat" areas.
Once the public is aware of this, pressure for congressional members to either vote for the repeal or the modification of the ESA, or be recalled from office, that will end this.
No more sitting around and saying it can't be done. No more saying it's the government and they can do what they want. Above all else, no more sitting. ACTION is needed. Educate the public that the ESA is mostly a complete and abmismal failure. Rally the public. That is the key to ending the most tyrannical law since the alien and sedition acts.

Tyler
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[davetclown]

On this issue I beleive they did the right thing by recending the bush law.

in my 46 years I have seen only one bobcat. one greay wolf, and one mountian lion (cougar/panther) in the wild. and both of them in areas where biologist sware they are none. and I say "OK" and dont push the matter, they dont bother me, I dont bother them.

the fact of the matter is you have more to fear from your neighbors house cat than you do anything else. they go in the wild every day, they get bit and eat infectous animals, they cary bugs back in to the house or to you if they rub up aginst you. (lice, ticks, fleas, mites, head lice, pinkeye, distemper and rabies among others)

where as local governments demand your dog be licened with papers for 5 different vactinations, a house cat goes uncheck.....

wolves are not like your neighbors rotwhiler that will come in and kill a flock of chickens for kicks, a wolf takes one animal and will feed on it for days. (I just used rotwilers only as an example there are a number of domestic dogs that will do the same damage as a wolf and worse. they will come back day after day for the pleasure of killing. I have seen this first hand)

The peoples of each local states should have the last say when it comes time to say when a particular species has recovered.

Trapping of greay wolves has restarted in upper michigan only for siencetific perpous. to see what it is eating, where it is living, what water holes it is drinking from and genneral health.

If you get a greay wolf in a cyote trap, be ready to sacrifice your coat to realeace the animal. Or carry a capture and release bag to place over the wolf head so that it can be handled.

I hate to see any president flexing his musscles in this mannor, it dosnt matter who it is or what political denomination it reminds me of the nightmare stories of King Henery the 8th and King George.

These dicisions should be based on sicence and not political boundry lines.

On one last note, those grey wolves that do take domestic animals are captured easily tethered and removed to remote areas, and should that animal return it is uthinized by biologist (killed)
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[Dryrod]

[font "Poor Richard"][#005000][size 4]Have to disagree with you on the matter of wolves killing for the hell of it. Man is the only animal that kills for the thrill of it be it wild life or other humans. I would rather walk through a wolf's territory fearing less than that of passing through a gang bangers turf.[/size][/#005000][/font]
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[davetclown]

If that is your opinion, you and I are not in disagreance, I was not insuport of the president signing the paper to remove the wolves from the endangered species list across america.

there is a socalled outdoor sportsman in michigan with his own show who was ticked off by the courts rulling against the lift. then last week he did a 180 in his opinion after he learned a little more about the situation and stated he was behind the court fully for putting the wolf back on the list and told every one that the wolf has not recovered all over north amreica. only in a couple places has the wolf packs been restored to stable numbers.

This same so called outdoor sportsman also stated on the same week that he was against the wolves that there was no anti hunting and fishing people who are trying to keep us from fishing and hunting. Ticked me off pretty good...

the only thing I could think of was this man was drunk on his gouard when he taped that show... and by the way, those bambi is real lovers wrote letters of complaints in groves after that show when he said there was no such thing as the easter bunny.

Well you and I know for a fact there is. When ever easter falls in march there is a season on easter bunnies [laugh] Michigan rabbit season ends last day of march. the funny part was these anti hunting and fishing people stated in their complaints they would not be suporting him this year on his tellithon spot for public tv. You and I both know they never did...[sly] Dont ya just love empty threats.[]

I agree with you, I too would rather take my chances walking through a pack of wolves than walk down a street in the city of detroit in the day time. if the crooks dont mug ya the adics will and if by chance you some how elude them the cops will pick you up, and not to give you a ride across town...

every day some body is murdered in the city of detroit. in the last 100 years 2 people died from wolf attack. even a non gambler can figue out these odds...[blush]
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