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Wolf hunt opponents to launch second signature drive

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on July 7, 2013| 2 Comments »


proposed wolf hunt areas

“LANSING — A group that opposes a gray wolf hunt says it will launch a second ballot petition drive to stop the proposed hunt after its first effort was thwarted by the Legislature.

Keep Michigan Wolves Protected submitted more than 255,000 signatures in March in an effort to overturn a December 2012 state law that allows the hunting and trapping of wolves.

But in May, lawmakers and Gov. Rick Snyder approved a new bill that allows the Michigan Natural Resources Commission to add animals to the list of game species. That action meant Keep Michigan Wolves Protected could still go ahead with a vote on the earlier law, but it would not have the effect of stopping the hunt.

The commission is expected to approve a limited wolf hunt beginning in mid-November when it meets this month.

On Tuesday, Keep Michigan Wolves Protected announced it will launch a second signature drive, this one aimed at the new law.

“This second referendum will preserve the impact of our first referendum that has already been certified for the ballot — ensuring Michigan voters have the right to protect wolves and other wildlife matters,” said Jill Fritz, director of the group.

She said her group won’t be able to collect signatures and get them certified in time to stop the November hunt. Once the proposed repeal of a state law is certified for the ballot, that law is suspended pending the election.

If the new drive is successful, there would be two wolf-related ballot measures on the November 2014 ballot.

Keep Michigan Wolves Protected describes itself as a coalition of conservation groups, animal welfare organizations, Native American tribes, wildlife scientists, veterinarians, hunters, farmers and more than 7,000 citizens.”

**Special thanks to “Detroit Free Press (http://www.freep.com/article/20130702/NEWS06/307020046/wolf-hunt-michigan) for providing this information!

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Is the far right driving gray wolves to extinction?

Posted in Facts and Figures, Wolf Current Events on June 30, 2013| 2 Comments »


walking wolf

The Fish and Wildlife Service bows to pressure from antigovernment groups, removing the animals’ endangered status

By :

“The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent announcement that it is beginning the process for removing gray wolves across the country from the protection of the Endangered Species Act surprised no one. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s mid-1990s reintroduction of gray wolves — a species virtually extirpated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho marked a triumph for conservationists and ranks as one of the most striking fulfillments of the Endangered Species Act. But as I have reported here and here, the wolves quickly met enemies.

By the early 2000s a loose coalition of hunters’ groups, outfitters, and ranchers — along with the many disaffected men embracing militia groups, local “sovereignty” and states rights, particularly rights to use public lands without federal regulation — coalesced around the idea that wolves represented icons of the hated federal government. The wolves, they all-but-screamed, constituted lethal threats to deer and elk, livestock, and ultimately, people. The long, bitter wolf war reached its climax in the summer of 2011, when Congress took the unprecedented act of removing the wolf populations of the Northern Rockies from the endangered species list. In May 2011, the Fish and Wildlife Service, weary of the many problems involved in wolf management (or, rather, public relations management), delisted gray wolves in the Western Great Lakes states, where some 4,400 wolves resided.   Idaho, Montana and Wyoming subsequently initiated hunts and the use of government marksmen to reduce wolf numbers from around 1,700 to a much lower level.

The FWS’s proposed delisting of gray wolves across the country is simply the continuation of the agency’s long retreat in the face of wolf hater intimidation. Still, it’s important to understand how the FWS legitimizes its abandonment of wolves. A close examination of the FWS’ proposed rule change is a case study in the politicization of science. The FWS report excels at cherry picking, choosing certain scientific studies while rejecting others. It’s also an excellent example of bureaucratic hand-waving, simply dismissing long established facts whenever they become inconvenient. The final result is like a weird game of scientific Twister: The FWS bends itself into all sorts of contortions to conform to a political agenda.

Repetitive and often inconsistent, the 215-page proposed rule makes two stunning claims.  First, the FWS says “new information on C. lupus taxonomy” published in 2012 reveals that the gray wolves (C. lupus) do not constitute “either an entire species nor an entire single subspecies.” Simply put, C. lupus “does not represent a valid species under the [Endangered Species] Act”  — and thus cannot be listed as endangered. Having decided that gray wolves are not a valid species, the FWS then deconstructs the category, saying all wolves formerly called gray actually belong to one of three subspecies of wolves and one new species.

The FWS then makes the rather bizarre claims that the agency wasn’t really serious when, back in 1978, it listed gray wolves as endangered across an historical range covering most of the lower 48 states (except Minnesota, where it was listed as “threatened”). Rather, the agency now claims, the 1978 reclassification “was undertaken to ‘most conveniently’ handle a listing that needed to be revised because of changes in our understanding of gray wolf taxonomy, and in recognition of the fact that individual wolves sometimes cross subspecies [geographic] boundaries.” Now, the FWS argues, “this generalized approach to the listing … was misread by some publics as an expression of a larger wolf recovery not required by the Act and never intended by the Service.” Evidently the FWS never really had wolf recovery as a goal.

In place of this unintended “larger wolf recovery,” the FWS in its newly proposed rule lists three subspecies and alludes to one new wolf species, each with a limited population size and a clearly limited range.  Conceptually, deconstructing the gray wolf category constitutes a containment strategy, a way to scientifically legitimize small, remnant wolf populations restricted to finite ranges; wide-ranging wolf dispersal is eliminated as a possibility. This containment appeases politicians, government administrators, businesses, ranchers  and hunters — all those who fear disruption from  wolf recovery.

What the FWS used to call the gray wolves living in Northern Rocky Mountains, — a “Distinct Population Segment” in biology nomenclature —  is now conceptualized as the wolf subspecies,  C. l. occidentalis.  Wolves classified as occidentalis , according to the FWS, “currently occupy nearly the entire historical range of the species.” In what I can only call an act of scientific chutzpah, the FWS therefore argues that these wolves are considered fully recovered. And since they are fully recovered and are occupying their historical range, then any occidentalis  that disperse to Washington, Oregon or Colorado are classified as a non-native species. Although individual states might choose to list them as endangered—Washington and Oregon have done this — they will not qualify as a federally protected Distinct Population Segment of gray wolves. That’s because the FWS no longer considers gray wolves to be a valid species. Nice circular logic, that.

The FWS is also playing this same shell game in the Western Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Wolves living there formerly were classified as a Distinct Population Segment of gray wolves.  It used to be that if any of these wolves migrated outside these states — say to North and South Dakota — then they received protection by the Endangered Species Act. Now, under the proposed rule change, the wolves in the Western Great Lakes are classified asCanis Iupus nubilus. Although the FWS acknowledges that C. I. nubilus does not occupy all of its historical range — a vast area that once included the Southern Rocky Mountains, the Colorado Plateau, and the coastal ranges of the Pacific Northwest — the agency still makes the case that the subspecies is present in sufficient numbers in the Western Great Lakes and Canada to be considered fully recovered. So it shouldn’t be protected by the ESA, either.

Interestingly, although the FWS considers eastern Canada to be part of the range of C. l. nubilus, it now argues that no wolves of this subspecies ever settled south of Quebec, in New England and upstate New York.  Instead, the FWS says an entirely different wolf species, Canis lycaon, once lived there. No population estimates of Canis lycaon are given; nor does the FWS name areas where packs have been sighted. The FWS does not even propose listing at the present, saying “we must first address outstanding science and policy questions.” It’s not at all clear if real wolves belonging to Canis lycaon exist. But if the Northeast is classified as belonging to the historical range of Canis lycaon, then any gray wolves (C. l. nubilus) that migrate into the region will not be protected by the ESA.  Once again, the FWS proposes creating a new species in order to remove protection for another one.

(If you’re having problem tracking all of these different species and subspecies, don’t feel bad. All of the taxonomical shenanigans seem designed to confuse the public.)

There is one bright spot in this otherwise gloomy picture. One subspecies of the supposedly no longer valid Canis lupis  will receive protection under the proposed rule: the Mexican wolf, or C. l. baileyi.  A tiny remnant population of Mexican wolves — abount 75 — live in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. Another 250 live in captivity in the US and Mexico awaiting reintroduction to the wild. The FWS wants to maintain the endangered listing for C. l. baileyi, saying it is “in danger of extinction throughout all of its range due to small population size, illegal killing, inbreeding, and the cumulative effect of all threats.” The FWS says its interim goal is to support 100 wolves, at first glance a significant improvement.

But it remains uncertain how — or whether — the FWS proposes to bolster the population of Mexican wolves. In 2011 a subdivision of the FWS tasked with developing a plan for Mexican wolf recovery concluded that the agency would need needed three distinct recovery areas connected by corridors across parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Texas, with each area to become home for 200 to 350 wolves. The head of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team immediately came under massive political pressure from state wildlife agencies and the governor of Utah, who made a range of political and economic arguments to curtail the scientists’ recovery plan. Unsurprisingly, the June 7 proposed rule says nothing about what full recovery would entail.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has filed a lawsuit against the FWS under the Freedom of Information Act asking for all documents related to the June 7 rule on wolf delisting. PEER executive director Jeff Ruch thinks his group will begin to receive documents by late July. “We’ll post all their dirty laundry on our website,” he says. PEER will thus provide a preview of the documentary record long before the Fish and Wildlife Service completes its year-long rule-making process. If the rule becomes finalized as official policy and gray wolves abolished as a species, conversation organizations will challenge it in court.

Some wolf advocates hope the taxonomical shell game will be so crude and obvious that public outcry over wolf delisting will persuade the Obama administration to withdraw the proposal. Noah Greenwald from the Center of Biological Diversity argues, “ The majority of Americans support protection of endangered species, support protection for wolves. I would like to think the Obama administration is not tone deaf.”

Nabeki of the Howling for Justice blog concurs. She told me: “This may just backfire on them. It’s so transparent to delist wolves in states where they don’t exist. It will open up people’s eyes.”

**Special thanks to James Gibson, http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/is_the_far_right_driving_gray_wolves_to_extinction_partner/, for providing this information!

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Montana Conservationist Accused Of Declaring War On Wolves

Posted in Wolf Current Events on June 16, 2013| 4 Comments »


 

“Many conservationists are furious over a recent proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to drop the gray wolf from the endangered species list.

At least one group of conservationists, however, also supports dropping federal protection for wolves. They are the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, led by hunter David Allen.

“The recovery has surpassed the agreed upon recovery goals by 500%,” Allen told Business Insider. “It is time to let the states do their job.”

Allen’s controversial stance has alienated some former supporters of the Elk Foundation, who accuse him of turning the conservation group into a pro-hunting lobby. The family of famed wildlife biologist Olaus J. Murie pulled money last year for its annual Elk Foundation award on account of the organization’s “all-out war against wolves,” according to the Montana Pioneer.

Allen insists that he really is looking out for the environment.

The reintroduction of wolves is one of the leading causes for the decline of elk herds in the Rocky Mountain region because it gave a top predator a kind of “amnesty,” Allen argues.

“ln 1995, [Yellowstone elk were] the largest herd in North America,” Allen said. “It’s probably not coincidental that after wolves were reintroduced, the elk population fell from 19,000 to 4,000.”

Allen would like to see the wolf population in the Rocky Mountain region shrink: “We do feel like the number could be managed downward and not threaten the population overall,” he said.

When asked by the Pioneer about the natural predator-prey relations, Allen said: “Natural balance is a Walt Disney movie. It isn’t real.”

The former marketer for NASCAR is not what you might think of today as a conservationist. Allen poses for photos in hunter camo, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has a page on its site called “The Hunt,” where users can plan their own elk hunts and get game recipes from the “Carnivore’s Corner.”

But he and his cohort maintain that hunters are the original conservationists. They take inspiration from early American hunters and outdoorsmen like Theodore Roosevelt. Founded by three hunters in Montana in 1984, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has acquired 6.3 million acres of land, all of which it has handed over to the public through government agencies.

The proposal to delist gray wolves across the country and return management to the states comes less than two years after populations in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Utah, which cover the Northern Rocky Mountain region, were stripped of Federal protections.

Environmental activists who oppose taking gray wolves off the endangered species list argue that the population has not been restored to its historical range, which once extended across the much of the contiguous United States.

Considered a threat to livestock, the gray wolf was nearly hunted to extinction in the early to mid-20th century. Canadian-born gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s and the population has largely recovered due to conservation efforts.

There is a correlation between the rise of wolf populations and decline in elk, but biologists debate whether the gray wolf is responsible.

Allen admits that there are likely many causes for elk’s gradual demise but is convinced that predation is playing its part.

“The wolf is not 100% responsible,” he said. “But when you combine the wolf with two species of bear, mountain lions, and man’s ever-expanding footprint, you get a kind of a perfect storm.”

Allen maintains that he is not trying to eradicate the wolf from the United States, but he is convinced that management should be left up to the states.

“Nobody in their right mind is saying that we should exterminate wolves,” he said.“But we should leave this to the people who live in these states [with wolf populations]. Ultimately they are the ones who have to live with the circumstances and they have to make it work.”

**Special thanks to Robert Ferris, http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-man-accused-of-leading-an-all-out-war-on-wolves-2013-6?utm_source=hearst&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=allverticals#Scene_1 for providing this information!

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Steve Duin: So much for wolf recovery

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Legislation on June 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »


mexicanwolf

“Unlike those of us who simply root for OR-7 from afar, Noah Greenwald chances upon wolves now and then. At the northeastern edge of Yellowstone National Park last week, he watched three gray wolves spar with nervous coyotes, unsuccessfully stalk a bison calf, then swim across the Lamar River.

“They really put on a show,” Greenwald says.

As the endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenwald is a serious wolves’ fan. He has spent 10 years working to give those predators a fighting chance.

Not surprisingly, then, Greenwald is an unsettled critic of the Obama administration’s insistence that wolves no longer need federal protection to ensure their survival.

“This is like kicking a patient out of the hospital when they’re still attached to life-support,” Greenwald says. “We’ve had a lot of success. Wolf numbers are up. But the job of recovery isn’t done yet. Livestock and hunting interests have successfully lobbied to have wolf recovery shut down.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that the survival of the nation’s 6,000 gray wolves is best consigned to the states.

And the states — which pull in a great deal more money from hunting licenses than species protection — are cool with that. As Dave Ware, the Washington state game division manager told the Associated Press last September, “We don’t see a real need for continued federal protections when the state protections are there.”

In at least five states, those “protections” include a hunting season. Idaho licensed hunters and trappers to kill 375 wolves in the winter of 2012. And last winter, similarly gleeful “sportsmen” in the state of Minnesota dispatched another 410, according to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press.

The wolf slaughters, as you can see, are not limited to “Game of Thrones.”

As the OR-7 diehards know, Oregon has enjoined those hunting sprees in recent years, but that may soon change.

The Legislature is all hot and bothered about the occasional carnage when one of Oregon’s 46 wolves bumps into one of the state’s 1.28 MILLION cows. The House has already passed a bill which provides conditions for ranchers to obliterate the wolf that preys on livestock.

The Center for Biological Diversity, understandably, objects. As Greenwald notes, fatal wolf attacks on livestock are still rare — less than 10 each year — and the Department of Agriculture compensates the rancher for the spoiled beef.

What’s more, Amaroq Weiss, the center’s wolf expert, argues that fatal wolf attacks have decreased in Wallowa County, where ranchers and state agencies have employed nonlethal prevention tactics, even as those attacks have increased in the hunter’s paradise that is Idaho.

When orphaned pups aren’t taught to kill the pack’s natural prey, elk and deer, Weiss says, they are left no choice but to take down a sluggish cow.

Greenwald doesn’t view wolves as just another ranching nuisance but as an apex predator that shapes its ecosystem. When a wolf pack is keeping the elk and coyotes in check, it’s great news for streamside vegetation — and, thus, for songbirds, beaver and fish — and pronghorn fawns.

All the more reason, then, that we have a national recovery plan for wolves, similar to the one for bald eagles, and reasonable target populations in each region.

In the absence of that, Oregon has a grand statewide “goal” of eight wolf packs. Says Greenwald, “I don’t think you can find a scientist who would say eight wolf packs across the state is sustainable or anywhere near a recovered population.”

Not that Fish and Wildlife is looking for a scientist somewhere behind the locked-and-loaded line of ranchers and elk hunters. At a pivotal moment in wolf recovery, the feds have abandoned it, and the Legislature is re-arming the rural militia.

Let’s hope the news reaches OR-7 before our ultimate lone wolf skirts the edge of cattle country.”

**Special thanks to Steve Duin, http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2013/06/steve_duin_so_much_for_wolf_re.html, for providing this information!

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Plan lifts Lower 48 wolf protections

Posted in Wolf Current Events on June 8, 2013| 2 Comments »


wolf

“BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Obama administration on Friday proposed lifting most remaining federal protections for gray wolves across the Lower 48 states, a move that would end four decades of recovery efforts but that some scientists said was premature.

State and federal agencies have spent more than $117 million restoring the predators since they were added to the endangered species list in 1974. Today more than 6,100 wolves roam portions of the Northern Rockies and western Great Lakes.

With Friday’s announcement, the administration signaled it’s ready to move on: The wolf has rebounded from near-extermination, balance has been restored to parts of the ecosystem, and hunters in some states already are free to shoot the animals under state oversight.

But prominent scientists and dozens of lawmakers in Congress want more wolves in more places. They say protections need to remain in force so the animals can expand beyond the portions of 10 states they now occupy.

Lawsuits challenging the administration’s plan are almost certain.

The gray wolf’s historical range stretched across most of North America. By the 1930s, government-sponsored trapping and poisoning left just one small pocket of the animals, in northern Minnesota.

In the past several years, after the Great Lakes population swelled and wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies, protections were lifted in states where the vast majority of the animals now live: Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and portions of Oregon, Washington and Utah.

Under the administration’s plan, protections would remain only for a fledgling population of Mexican gray wolves in the desert Southwest. The proposal will be subject to a public comment period and a final decision made within a year.

While the wolf’s recent resurgence is likely to continue at some level elsewhere — multiple packs roam portions of Washington and Oregon, and individual wolves have been spotted in Colorado, California, Utah, the Dakotas and the Northeast — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe indicated it’s unrealistic to think the clock can be turned back entirely.

“Science is an important part of this decision, but really the key is the policy question of when is a species recovered,” he said. “Does the wolf have to occupy all the habitat that is available to it in order for it to be recovered? Our answer to that question is no.”

Hunting and agriculture groups wary of the toll wolves have taken on livestock and big game herds welcomed the announcement.

Jack Field, executive vice president of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association and a rancher from Yakima, said he was “ecstatic” over the agency’s announcement and believed it would make his colleagues more willing to accept the presence of wolves on the landscape.

“Folks have to understand that in order to recover wolves, we’re going to have to kill problem wolves,” Field said

Over the past several years, hunters and trappers killed some 1,600 wolves in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Thousands more have been killed over the past two decades by government wildlife agents responding to livestock attacks.

That’s been a relief for ranchers who suffer regular wolf attacks that can kill dozens of livestock in a single night.

Supporters say lifting protections elsewhere will help avoid the animosity seen among many ranchers in the West, who long complained that their hands were tied by rules restricting when wolves could be killed.

Vast additional territory that researchers say is suitable for wolves remains unoccupied. That includes parts of the Pacific Northwest, California, the southern Rocky Mountains and northern New England.

Whether the species’ expansion will continue without a federal shield remains subject to contentious debate.

The former director of the Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton said the agency’s proposal “is a far cry from what we envisioned for gray wolf recovery when we embarked on this almost 20 years ago.”

“The service is giving up when the job’s only half-done,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, who was with the agency when wolves were reintroduced in Idaho and Wyoming in the mid-1990s. She now heads the group Defenders of Wildlife.

Colorado alone has enough space to support up to 1,000 wolves, according to Carlos Carroll of California’s Klamath Center for Conservation Research. He said wildlife officials had “cherry-picked” the available science to suit their goal, and were bowing to political pressure from elected officials across the West who pushed to limit the wolf’s range.

The Center for Biological Diversity on Friday vowed to challenge the government in court if it takes the animals off the endangered species list as planned.

Ashe said Friday’s proposal had been reviewed by top administration officials, including new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. But he dismissed any claims of interference and said the work that went into the plan was exclusively that of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Future recovery efforts would focus on a small number of wolves belonging to a subspecies, the Mexican gray wolf. Those occur in Arizona and New Mexico, where a protracted and costly reintroduction plan has stumbled in part due to illegal killings and inbreeding.

The agency is calling for a tenfold increase in the territory where biologists are working to rebuild that population, which now numbers 73 animals. Law enforcement efforts to ward off poaching in the region would be bolstered.

Wherever wolves are found, the primary barrier to expansion isn’t lack of habitat or prey, but human intolerance, said David Mech, a leading wolf expert and senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Paul, Minn.

Even without federal protection, he believes wolves are likely to migrate into several Western states. He added that they already occupy about 80 percent of the territory where they realistically could be expected to thrive, with sufficient prey and isolation from people.

Although Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Northern California might have enough habitat for wolves to thrive, Mech said that might not happen if hunters kill so many Northern Rockies wolves that it reduces the number that would disperse from packs and seek new turf.”

**Special thanks to Associated PressBy MATTHEW BROWN and JOHN FLESHER | Associated Press, for providing this information!

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American Indian Tribes To Challenge Michigan Wolf Hunt

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on June 4, 2013| 2 Comments »


Wolf Wolf

“Five Michigan Indian tribes have decided to challenge the state’s decision to hold a wolf hunt in the western UP this coming fall.

As we hear from The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Rick Pluta, they say the wolf hunt violates a treaty.

Specifically, the tribes of the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority say the state did not consult with them in a meaningful way before establishing a gray wolf season, and that’s required by a 2007 consent decree.

Aaron Payment leads the Sault Sainte Marie Tribe of Chippewas. He says the wolf is sacred in tribal culture and the hunting season disrespects that.

“The five tribes that are a party to the consent decree are unified that we are going to take some steps, and we’re not exactly sure what that is at this point, but we’re not happy with the outcome,” he says.

Payment says the treaty gives the tribes options including mediating a resolution or going to court.

The state says the tribes were consulted as part of the process that set up a wolf season in the western UP.”

 

**Special thanks to , WKAR, http://wkar.org/post/american-indian-tribes-challenge-michigan-wolf-hunt, for providing this information!

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In the News: U.S. Sued Over Policy on Killing Endangered Wildlife

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on May 30, 2013| 6 Comments »


Lobo Wolf
L.A. Times, May 29, 2013 – Activists say the rule that hunters must know they are killing a protected animal allows the Justice Department to abdicate prosecution. (posted 05/30/13)
“Environmental groups are taking the Justice Department to court over a policy that prohibits prosecuting individuals who kill endangered wildlife unless it can be proved that they knew they were targeting a protected animal.
Critics charge that the 15-year-old McKittrick policy provides a loophole that has prevented criminal prosecution of dozens of individuals who killed grizzly bears, highly endangered California condors and whooping cranes as well as 48 federally protected Mexican wolves.
The policy stems from a Montana case in which Chad McKittrick was convicted under the Endangered Species Act for killing a wolf near Yellowstone National Park in 1995. He argued that he was not guilty because he thought he was shooting a wild dog.
McKittrick appealed the conviction and lost, but the Justice Department nonetheless adopted a policy that became the threshold for taking on similar cases: prosecutors must prove that the individual knowingly killed a protected species.
The lawsuit charges that the policy sets a higher burden of proof than previously required, arguing, “The DOJ’s McKittrick policy is a policy that is so extreme that it amounts to a conscious and express abdication of DOJ’s statutory responsibility to prosecute criminal violations of the ESA as general intent crimes.”
WildEarth Guardians and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance said they intend to file a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Arizona, one of the states where Mexican wolves were reintroduced. The Times received an advance copy of the lawsuit.
Federal wildlife managers who are responsible for protecting endangered animals have long criticized the policy as providing a pretext for illegal trophy hunters and activists.
A June 2000 memo from the law enforcement division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Wyoming warned, “As soon as word about this policy gets around the West, the ability for the average person to distinguish a grizzly bear from a black bear or a wolf from a coyote will decline sharply. Under this policy a hen mallard is afforded more protection than any of the animals listed as endangered.”
Earlier this year, a man in Texas shot and killed a whooping crane, telling authorities that he thought it was a legally hunted Sandhill crane. He was not charged under the Endangered Species Act but was prosecuted under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which carries lesser penalties.
Wendy Keefover of WildEarth Guardians compared the policy to “district attorneys rescinding speeding tickets issued by traffic cops when then speeder claims he or she believed the legal speed limit was greater than what was posted, and that he or she had no intention to break the law.”
The unspoken attitude toward endangered species among some western ranchers is summed up by the expression: “Shoot. Shovel. And shut up,” suggesting that the most efficient way to deal with the unwanted bureaucracy associated with protected species was to quietly remove them.
Mexican wolves have been decimated by illegal shootings, causing the death of more than half of the animals released in the wild since the start of the reintroduction program in 1998.
Forty-eight Mexican wolves have been illegally killed, according to the lawsuit. It notes that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service anticipated that illegal shooting and trapping was likely to be a major impediment to recovery of the species, but the agency thought that strong enforcement could discourage the illegal acts.
Wolves are often killed by hunters who say they thought they were shooting at coyotes, which may be shot on sight in most states.
Mistaken identity is also frequently given in mix-ups between black bears and grizzly bears that lead to grizzly deaths.
The Wyoming U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service memo included this example:
In May 1996, a man hunting for black bear in Wyoming shot and killed a collared grizzly bear, an endangered species.
The hunter and three friends moved the bear carcass, destroyed the collar, dug a hole, dumped in the bear, poured lye over it and covered the hole.
When the animal’s remains were recovered, the man said he thought he was shooting at a common black bear.
The U.S. attorney’s office reviewed the case and declined to prosecute it, citing the McKittrick policy.”
**Special thanks to Lobos of the Southwest for providing this information!
This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times on May 29, 2013.

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Minnesota Court of Appeals Dismisses Petition Challenging Wolf Hunting and Trapping

Posted in Wolf Current Events on May 29, 2013| 2 Comments »


Collared Wolf

Minnesota Court of Appeals Dismisses Petition Challenging Wolf Hunting and Trapping

“ST. PAUL, MN (May 28, 2013) – The Minnesota Court of Appeals today dismissed the petition challenging wolf hunting and trapping on the basis of standing, not on the basis of the merits of the case. The Court found that the petitioners (Center for Biological Diversity, Howling For Wolves) did not adequately persuade the Court that sufficient standing was held to challenge the rulemaking process implemented by the MN DNR for the inaugural wolf hunting and trapping season.

“It’s hard to put into words our disappointment and sense of injustice over this decision.” said Dr. Hackett, founder of Howling For Wolves. “Minnesotans have a legitimate concern about the care and management of our wolves and all our natural resources. The public’s input should not be disregarded just because it’s convenient for the DNR.”

Since 1995, the MN DNR has authorized 200 of the 202 hunting rules using the expedited emergency rulemaking process that bypasses any opportunities for public input. Hackett states, “When the public is cut out of the process for public agency decisions and rulemaking, then bad stuff can happen, like the agency becomes hostage to special interests with special demands.”

The requirement that the DNR have a formal public comment was the law prior to the start of the inaugural 2012 wolf hunting season. But the DNR only offered an online survey where the actual rule which would have described to the public the methods allowed to kill wolves, was not published. Nearly 80% of respondents to the informal DNR online survey opposed the wolf hunt. But this response was ignored by the DNR.

A recent Lake Research Partners poll found that 79% of respondents agreed that the wolf is a valuable asset to Minnesota and one that should be protected for future generations. The majority (66%) also opposed trapping and snaring wolves for sport.

Howling For Wolves is analyzing the Court’s decision and considering its options. Despite today’s legal news, Howling For Wolves has plans and opportunities going forward to forge a peaceful existence for the wolf in Minnesota.

Howling For Wolves was created to be a voice for wild wolves and those who are concerned with their survival. We aim to educate the public about our wolf population and the advocacy that is necessary to keep wild wolves in a self-sustaining existence. For more information and resources: www.howlingforwolves.org

Maureen Hackett, M.D., the founder of Howling For Wolves, is a physician, a triple board certified forensic psychiatrist, and a former United State Air Force officer. In 2003, Hackett was instrumental in the passage of Minnesota law providing for tobacco-free state hospital grounds.”

**Special thanks to Contact: Maureen Hackett, MD 612-250-5915
hackett@howlingforwolves.org, for providing this information! 

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Arizona endangered wolves still on the brink

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on May 26, 2013| 5 Comments »


Arizona Map

Wolf-relocation project struggles as lobos fall prey to guns and cars…

By Brandon Loomis The Republic  |  azcentral.com, Sat May 25, 2013 11:25 PM

“ALPINE — A brown-streaked wolf — named Ernesta by her admiring captors — bounded from a crate and onto Arizona soil. She carries in her womb the newest hopes for a rare native species that is struggling to regain a footing in the Southwest.

Her government-sponsored April 25 relocation with her mate, from New Mexico’s Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge to a mountain south of Alpine, was the first in the state for a captive-bred pair of Mexican gray wolves in more than four years.

The last time a new canine couple sniffed freedom in these mountains, in fall 2008, they didn’t last the winter. Someone shot the female almost immediately, and the male disappeared by February.

“It’s a tough life for wolves in the wild,” Endangered Wolf Center animal-care director Regina Mossotti said after watching the latest pair bolt from their crates last month in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests. The Missouri non-profit center is part of a breeding program and has nurtured both of the transplanted wolves at times. Mossotti felt a special kinship with the female she helped raise, and she was a little anxious.

“It’s like seeing a child graduate from high school and go off into the world,” Mossotti said.

There is reason to worry.

Fifteen years after America reintroduced lobos to the Southwest, only 75 ran wild at the end of 2012. Officials celebrated that record high as a small victory, but it’s a tenth of what scientists on a 2005 panel proposed as a recovery goal. Humans have killed dozens of reintroduced wolves, mostly through illegal shootings and vehicle collisions.

As of 2011, the federal, state and tribal agencies involved estimated they had spent about $26 million studying, breeding and restoring Mexican wolves over about 20 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service paid the biggest share, nearly $17 million. The Arizona Game and Fish Department paid $2.5 million and used another $3 million in federal funds.

Wolf advocates fear the animals’ extinction unless the government increases the frequency of the releases, adopts a population goal and extends the wolf a welcome mat beyond the current recovery area in far eastern Arizona and western New Mexico — perhaps to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. Those are long-sought wishes that have languished as ranchers and hunters pushed back and the government stuck with a plan that limits wolves to the Blue Mountains.

“The Mexican wolf’s fate really hangs in the balance between the promise that we’ve long heard of scientific management and the reality that we’ve long experienced of politicized management,” said Michael Robinson, New Mexico-based wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

 

Conflict in cattle country

John Hand has raised cattle across the state line in Catron County, N.M., since 1953. He said the Fish and Wildlife Service made a mistake bringing wolves back. It’s ranch country, he said, and the unavoidable conflicts mean the restoration is “doomed to fail.”

Wildlife agents confirmed wolves killed 18 cattle and one mule last year. The previous year’s toll was 20 cattle, a horse and a sheep. An interagency compensation fund helps offset losses.

Although wolves enjoy federal protection as an endangered species, their status here as an experimental population gives ranchers a right to defend cattle. They can legally shoot wolves that are attacking their stock on private land, and can report them to government officials for potential agency-directed trapping or killing after repeated offenses on public lands.

“I don’t want them on (our ranch),” Hand said. “If they come here, it’s not something we’ll tolerate. We’d probably shoot them. Our neighbor shot one not too long ago.”

That means Ernesta and family are endangered in more than just the legal sense.

Since she was relocated near Alpine, Ernesta, also known as F1126, is thought to have whelped an unknown number of pups and nursed them in a wooden denning box inside a fenced enclosure with a 473-foot perimeter. There the animals are getting acclimated and nervously accepting road-kill offerings until early June, when biologists will swing open the gates and leave the wolves to the forest. The pair are the 93rd and 94th captive-reared Mexican wolves released by federal biologists.

If they avoid bullets, bumpers, snakes, lightning and every other hazard that has prematurely killed 92 lobos since their 1998 reintroduction, they will form what biologists are calling the Coronado Pack. They also must avoid killing livestock and keep their distance from homes, or they could face the management actions that have killed another 12.

It’s a big “if” for the Mexican gray wolf, a subspecies of gray wolves that has not rebounded from the brink the way its larger cousins did in the northern Rockies after they were reintroduced in the 1990s. Canadian transplants there have produced thousands of offspring in the Yellowstone and central Idaho wildernesses.

Arizona lacks the vast, roadless forests of the north. Yellowstone National Park alone is half the size of the Mexican wolf’s currently designated recovery zone.

Another difference, according to Mexican wolf recovery coordinator Sherry Barrett, is that the northern wolves were transplanted from the wild and not from captivity. Biologists and veterinarians try to minimize human contact in captivity, but the animals are comparatively naive when released.

The Southwestern lobos also are smaller than their cousins — about 60 to 80 pounds — and are not impervious to elk hooves and antlers.

Then there’s the shooting.

“All of these wolves are relatively accessible,” Barrett said. “Whether it’s malicious or mistaken identity, we do experience regular mortality.”

Illegal shootings — 46 so far and four prosecutions — are an echo of an eradication program earlier in the 20th century, when ranchers and government trackers shot and poisoned Mexican gray wolves almost to extinction.

By the early 1980s, the species was down to seven genetically distinct animals to start a captive breeding program.

From those, dozens of wildlife centers have bred and maintained up to 300 at a time in captivity (currently 258). Attitudes toward wolves softened as ecologists stressed predators’ role in maintaining natural ecosystems, and former Arizona governor and U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt oversaw the wolf’s initial return during the Clinton administration.

A controversial return

The return was controversial, especially in the small towns most affected. Travis Udall, an Eagar school superintendent and a hunter, said wolves have struck the deer population and sometimes have struck fear in people.

“We’ve had a couple wolves follow us when we were hunting,” Udall said. “They say it’s curiosity, but it’s kind of unnerving.”

The recovery program generates hard feelings, he said. Locals feel imposed upon in a way they might not if wolves were left to recover or fade on their own.

“It feels forced,” he said.

Arizona has at times been a wary partner in the restoration. The Arizona Game and Fish Department in March said it wanted to hold the line at 100 wild Mexican wolves and remove endangered-species protections. A 1980s plan mentioned 100 as a first target, but wolf allies say that’s only because 100 seemed such a lofty goal from zero.

Managing for both hunters and animals can be tricky, and each release is made in consultation with the state.

“Wolves like to hunt elk and deer,” Game and Fish field team leader Chris Bagnoli said, “but so do people. So we want to make sure we have a good balance of all uses of the landscape.”

It would help, he said, if the program were permitted to spread beyond the Blue Mountains to dilute the local effects. But he said he believes the wolves are slowly breeding success. Their numbers grew by 15 in the last year. “I think we’re progressing,” he said.

Many conservationists hope that a new recovery plan will include two new wolf zones: one north of the Grand Canyon and one in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. These would help disperse wolves to reduce in-breeding — which reduces litter sizes — and protect against extinction during disease outbreaks.

“All of the science done to date points to the fact that there’s good habitat for wolves and good prey in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado and the Grand Canyon eco-region,” said Eva Sargent, Southwest program director for the non-profit Defenders of Wildlife. “The (Fish and Wildlife) Service really needs to be paving the way for all of that to happen. But instead of paving the way, I can tell you that the recovery team hasn’t met since 2011.”

That year, Utah’s governor and wildlife chief learned that the Fish and Wildlife Service was considering adding southern Utah to the wolf-recovery zone. Utah’s forests could offer spillover habitat for wolves released around the Grand Canyon. They wrote a letter to Washington in protest.

No detailed recovery plan

The program is operating under a 1982 plan that didn’t spell out conditions to meet before removing Endangered Species Act protections. The Fish and Wildlife Service had said it would produce a detailed plan last year, but it hasn’t. Barrett declined to say when it would be completed, and said discussions about potential recovery zones are internal.

The wild population needs more new blood like Ernesta and her pups, Sargent said. But without a science-based plan, the creature faces “extinction by bureaucratic delay.”

Barrett and Arizona officials say there are reasons not to rush releases, especially in family groups. First, the wolves must be monitored together to ensure that they bond and that they are wary of humans. They are conditioned against cattle predation with a nauseating substance fed to them in ground beef. There also has to be a promising, unoccupied range available for a new pack, and by rule the government can only release captive-bred wolves on the Arizona side of the recovery zone.

“We’re learning as we go,” Barrett said.

“It has been very, very slow,” said Phil Hedrick, an Arizona State University conservation biologist and geneticist. He twice served on Mexican wolf recovery planning teams that the Fish and Wildlife Service shut down without writing guidelines or population goals. He fears federal and state biologists have missed their window of opportunity for maximizing genetic diversity.

“The reasons why the numbers haven’t gone up are based on the killing,” Hedrick said, “and lack of active management.”

His last participation was in 2005, when he and other scientists recommended 750 wolves in three distinct populations. After that meeting, silence. The Bush administration never codified that plan and never explained why.

In the meantime, the Coronado Pack is getting the best start possible.

In New Mexico, a veterinarian vaccinated the parents and poured alcohol on their foot pads to help them cool down after a wall of 22 volunteers and agency workers closed in and spooked them into a box where they could be pinned by steel bars and blindfolded for safe transport.

In Arizona, they emerged into daylight just down a gravel road from the ignition point of the massive 2011 Wallow Fire. The largest wildfire in state history torched trees but recharged grass and shrub growth that should feed lots of elk and deer. The elements of a good life are all there.

Now it’s on Ernesta to live or die.”

**Special thanks to By Brandon Loomis The Republic  |  azcentral.com, for providing this information!

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Activists say wolf-killer is baiting the animals

Posted in Wolf Current Events on May 11, 2013| 3 Comments »


Collared Wolf

This 2013 photo provided by Horsefeathers Photography shows a black wolf wearing a VHF radio collar that identifies it as Wolf  “831F,” a member of the Yellowstone National Park ’s Canyon pack, in Swan Lake, Mont. Big game outfitter William Hoppe shot and killed this female wolf near where 13 sheep were killed in April. Leaders of a wolf advocacy group said Hoppe is intentionally luring the animals by leaving dead sheep carcasses in a pile. Photo: Horsefeathers Photography, Brad Orsted

May 8, 2013

“BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — A big game outfitter who shot and killed a collared wolf from Yellowstone National Park is intentionally luring the animals by leaving dead sheep carcasses in a pile, leaders of a wolf advocacy group said.

“Make no mistake about that, it’s definitely intentional baiting,” Marc Cooke, president of Wolves of the Rockies, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

William Hoppe shot and killed a 2-year old, female wolf Sunday near where 13 sheep were killed in April. He notified Fish, Wildlife and Parks warden Chris Kerin that he killed the wolf using one of his two shoot-on-sight permits the agency issued after the sheep were killed, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle (http://bit.ly/17LAEJ5) reported Wednesday. The permits are valid for 45 days and only allow wolves to be shot on the property where the sheep were killed.

In mid-April, Hoppe, an outspoken opponent of wolves, bought about 30 sheep and started raising them on his property along the Yellowstone River near Gardiner.

On April 24, he awakened to find that two wolves had killed five ewes and eight lambs.

Hoppe “deliberately put the sheep on his property … knowing that the wolves would kill them,” Cooke charged.

Hoppe told the Chronicle he was going to move the rest of the sheep closer to his house and that he had disposed of the dead sheep in a bone pile in the area where they were killed.

“This man needs to be held accountable for baiting,” said Kim Beam, vice president of Wolves of the Rockies. She said the issue would be raised at Thursday’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks commission meeting in Helena, where commissioners will consider the 2013 wolf hunting season.

Animals such as wolves and grizzly bears can smell carcasses a mile away and sometimes further, said Doug Smith, a Yellowstone National Park wolf biologist. He said the wolf that was killed Sunday may have been attracted by the decaying meat.

Smith said information from the wolf’s radio collar indicated that she was not involved in killing Hoppe’s sheep.

Hoppe is a former president of the Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd. In January, he opposed the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission’s decision to close wolf hunting around Yellowstone National Park. He argues wolves are driving down the elk population in the area.

He did not return a phone call seeking comment.”

Special thanks to http://www.chron.com/default/article/Activists-say-wolf-killer-is-baiting-the-animals-4498538.php for providing this information!

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