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Reality Check on Wolves, 3 stories #540521
01/25/08 04:48 PM
01/25/08 04:48 PM
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Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
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The New York Times
A Finnish Turf Battle Pits Wolf Against Reindeer Herder
By STEPHEN CASTLE
January 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes. com/2008/ 01/21/world/ europe/21wolves. html

SUOMUSSALMI, Finland --- Close to the tiny Finnish village of
Saaravaara, bloody tracks lead through the snow to the frozen carcass
of an 8-month-old male reindeer lying on its side, its neck torn, its
underbelly ripped open.

Within minutes, Ilmari Schepel, a local agriculture official,
identified the culprit: a wolf. His evidence was the shape of the bite
to the animal's throat and the belly tear; wolves are particularly
fond of reindeer intestines.

This town, a 20-minute drive from Finland's border with Russia and
more than 375 miles northeast of Helsinki, is on the front line of
Finland's wolf wars. The fight is between backers of European Union
regulations, which are meant to halt sharp drops in the population of
wolves and other endangered predators across Europe, and the roughly
7,000 reindeer herders whose livelihoods are threatened by increased
attacks on their animals.

Finland, which joined the European Union in 1995, came under criticism
that its hunting practices did not mesh with European habitat
directives. So in 2001, the Finnish government tightened its hunting
laws to meet European Union standards. Finnish law now states that
every kill must be covered by a permit and restricts the number of
permits to about 10 percent of a particular predator's known numbers.

Seven years later, the populations of wolves, lynxes, brown bears and
wolverines in Finland have grown substantially, according to the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Helsinki. In this area, the
number of wolves has roughly tripled since 1996, and attacks on
reindeer herds have increased more than threefold in the past 10
years.

The level of anger about the hunting restrictions is high here. In one
telling example, Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner
who insisted on the hunting crackdown to protect the endangered
predators, received a bullet in his mailbox from an irate hunter.

Asko Moilanen, 40, a third-generation herder, said that because of his
losses to predators over the past three years, his income from
reindeer has been reduced to almost nothing. "Either we should be
allowed to hunt or they should pay compensation for the real losses,"
he said. "It affects my whole life and my family."

Mr. Moilanen, who is married with four children, depends on his wife's
earnings to stay afloat. "The people are poor here, but I am a beggar.
Last year on my tax return, I declared just 100 dollars earned from
herding."

Herders complain that state compensation for lost reindeer --- each
carcass fetches about $439 --- is inadequate because it fails to take
account the remains of those that are never found. The Agriculture and
Forestry Ministry says the herders are fairly compensated.

In much of Finland, reindeer hold a hallowed place in the collective
imagination, perhaps akin to the buffalo in the history of the
American West. Farther north toward the Arctic Circle, Lapland is the
supposed home of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer. Less sentimental
Finns enjoy eating reindeer: fried, sautéed, smoked or cold.

For its part, the European Commission insists that, under the European
Habitats Directive, wolves have the right to be protected. "Men and
wolves have lived together for centuries, and there is no reason why
they should not continue to do so," said Barbara Helfferich, a
spokeswoman for Mr. Dimas, the European environment commissioner. "We
need to ensure coexistence and protect the species according to the
law."

The area around Suomussalmi is just north of the line that marks the
country's reindeer herding zone. Before Finnish law was amended in
2001, there were few restrictions on hunting of predators here.

On a recent day in the snow-covered forest, Kalervo Rytinki, a retired
policeman and herder, demonstrated how wolves are now hunted by
uncoiling a rope marked with small black flags that he tied around
trees. The rope --- known as a flag line --- enclosed an area where a
pack was known to be roaming. Because the line was dipped in a pungent
oil made from elk antlers, the wolves would be reluctant to cross the
line.

Gradually, the hunters reduced the area enclosed by the flag line to
trap the wolves.

Though herders here had permits to kill three wolves, Mr. Rytinki said
the hunt was halted because the wolf pack numbered at least nine and
there was a risk that more than three reindeer would be killed before
the wolves were trapped. He said there was no illegal hunting here
because anyone breaking the law could lose their rifle, face fines
related to income and go to jail for up to two years.

While those hunters were law abiding, some conservationist say the
same cannot be said for the country as a whole. Matti Nieminen, a
spokesman for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, said
that there was too much illegal hunting of wolves and that licensing
should focus on the wolves that kill most local animals.

According to Ilpo Kojola, a senior research scientist at the Finnish
Game and Fisheries Research Institute, mortality among wolves runs at
about 20 percent a year. Nine of 10 dead wolves are killed by humans
and, of those, about 30 percent die in illegal hunts, he said.

Finland last year lost a court case brought by the European
Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, which ruled that
Finns had failed to protect wolves from hunters. The commission is
expected to review the case and decide in the next two weeks whether
the authorities in Helsinki protect wolves and other endangered
predators sufficiently.


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Reality Check on Wolves, 3 stories [Re: Mira Trapper] #540523
01/25/08 04:49 PM
01/25/08 04:49 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
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Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
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Albuquerque Journal; Journal Southern Bureau
Wolf-Proof Shelters Go Up for School Kids
By Rene Romo
Sunday, December 2, 2007
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/266402nm12-02-07.htm

LAS CRUCES— Catron County parents say they're just concerned
about the safety of their children.
Animal activists say it's an overreaction.
Reserve Independent Schools is building wolf-proof shelters for
school bus stops in southwest New Mexico, where the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service has reintroduced the Mexican gray wolf.
The decision to create coop-like bus stops in this mostly rural
school district stems from "numerous reports of wolf sightings and
wolf activity in close proximity to our children," Superintendent
Loren Cushman said in an Oct. 30 memo on the project.
Enclosed wooden shelters will have wire-mesh covered windows on
the front and sides. The goal is to install the first of about 20
shelters by late December, Cushman said.
"Whether a person is pro or con wolf, we think it's a deterrent to
build these shelters," Cushman told the Journal. "We need to do
everything we can to protect our children."
Catron County residents, ranchers and outfitters— as well as many
of the county's elected officials— have been outspoken critics of the
Mexican gray wolf recovery program.
In 1998, the program started reintroducing the federally declared
endangered species to the wilds of southwestern New Mexico and
southeastern Arizona, where they had been hunted and trapped to near
extinction.
Dave Parsons, a former Fish and Wildlife Service coordinator of
the wolf recovery program, says the district is overreacting.
Wolves, he said, "elicit a reaction that is disproportionate to
the evidence that they pose a real threat."
The federally led effort to restore the wolves to the wild has
struggled. At the beginning of the year, 59 wolves were in the
recovery area, which includes national forests in southwestern New
Mexico and southeastern Arizona.

Kids followed
Cushman's memo cited two children from the Reserve area who on the
last day of school in May reported they were followed by a wolf during
their half-mile walk home from a school bus stop.
"The situation could have become tragic very quickly," he wrote.
Cushman has a 6-year-old daughter and said he worries about her when
she is outside their Reserve-area home.
The May report, along with other wolf sightings and attacks on
livestock and pets, led the district to "take further steps in
protecting our children," Cushman said.
Brenda McCarty, mother of the 13-year-old boy and 11-year-old girl
who reported being followed by a wolf, said her children no longer
walk to or from the bus stop and are afraid to go anywhere outside the
house by themselves.
McCarty said she has seen wolves in the area three miles north of
Reserve, and her family regularly hears a wolf howling near their
home.
She said her children are not as spooked as they were immediately
after the May wolf sighting, but "They are very cautious. They don't
go anywhere by themselves. ... Once it's dusk, nobody goes outside
anymore."

Threat questioned
Catron County ranchers have protested the wolf reintroduction
program since its outset, mostly because of recurring livestock kills.
But increasingly, protests from residents— often channeled through
elected officials and livestock groups— have centered on fears for the
safety of children.
When the Catron County Commission last month announced plans to
try to trap what it considered a dangerous wolf, unafraid of humans,
Chairman Ed Wehrheim said, "Wolves in Catron County are displaying the
exact behavior displayed by wolves that killed and ate Kenton
Carnegie."
It was not a reference to a southwestern New Mexico incident but
one in Canada: the Nov. 8, 2005, death in northern Saskatchewan of a
22-year-old engineering student from Ontario. A coroner's inquest
found Carnegie's death to be the first recorded case in North America
in the last 100 years of a human being killed by wolves, though some
biologists disputed the finding.
There have been documented cases of wolf attacks on humans in
North America over the last century. And there have been documented
wolf kills of humans in other parts of the world, though unprovoked
attacks by nonrabid wolves on people are considered rare.
"For sure, wolves ought to be respected for their ability to kill
anything they want to, but the facts of the matter are they have not
demonstrated any proclivity to attack humans," said Parsons, the
former wolf program coordinator. He is now a conservation biologist
with the Albuquerque-based Rewilding Institute.
"Certainly, there are a lot of other things out there that are a
much greater threat," he said.
Parsons cited a recent study by Sarah Lathrop, a veterinarian and
epidemiologist with the state Office of the Medical Investigator, who
found there were 63 animal-caused deaths of humans in New Mexico
during the 12-year stretch from 1993 through 2004.
Dog maulings caused three deaths. Sheep, rams specifically, killed
two elderly women. Cattle were responsible for nine deaths.
But the majority— 43 deaths, Lathrop said in an interview— were
caused by human interaction with horses, either after a fall from a
horse or after having been bucked, kicked, crushed or dragged by a
horse. Two people died from blunt-force injury to the chest after
being head-butted by a horse.

Publicity ploy?
Cushman ordered the wolf-proof bus stop shelters himself after
informing the school board.
The shelters will be built by Reserve High School students in
vocational classes, the superintendent said.
The district is accepting donations to help pay for the shelters,
which require about $400 in materials each, and Cushman said
volunteers are welcome to help build them.
The Curry County Farm and Livestock Bureau board, over on the east
side of the state, voted in September to donate money to the effort.
"This is the world turned upside down when we have to put our
children in cages to protect them from wolves nobody wants, sicced on
the citizens by their own government," Curry County Farm Bureau
President Dee Brown was quoted as saying in the New Mexico Farm and
Livestock Bureau newsletter. "This has got to stop."
Michael Robinson, a Silver City area representative of the Center
for Biological Diversity, a leading proponent of the wolf
reintroduction program, said he considered the bus stop shelters a
stunt "designed to get the sympathy of the public when the real
concern is safety of their livestock."
Robinson said rural Catron County is full of potential threats,
including black bears, mountain lions, rattlesnakes and javelinas.
Unaccompanied children are at risk regardless of the presence of
wolves, Robinson said.
Cushman, whose family has seen wolves near their home about 10
miles north of Reserve, denied the shelters are a public relations
ploy. He said one of his daughters saw a wolf kill their barn cat
about a year ago.
"I actually woke up one night about a year ago thinking about it,"
Cushman said. "No, it's not a publicity stunt."


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Reality Check on Wolves, 3 stories [Re: Mira Trapper] #540527
01/25/08 04:51 PM
01/25/08 04:51 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
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http://tinyurl.com/yosj29


Federal rule to allow more hunting of gray wolves
template_bas
template_bas
The loosening of restrictions is a 'safety valve' for states, in anticipation of a legal fight over delisting the species as endangered.
By Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 25, 2008
State game agencies and private citizens would be allowed to kill federally protected gray wolves that threatened dogs or seriously decreased deer, elk or moose populations in parts of the northern Rocky Mountains, under a federal rule announced Thursday.

The regulation comes a month ahead of the expected federal decision to take the gray wolf off the endangered species list, which would allow wolves to be hunted. That decision is likely to face protracted litigation.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services officials said Thursday that the revised provision would allow for states to deal with areas where wolf activity is affecting wildlife populations while delisting is tied up in court.

"This rule, if it goes forward, could provide a safety valve for the states during the two to three years while the delisting goes through litigation," said Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife's wolf recovery coordinator. "Whether this rule ever gets used or not, who knows. But if you're protecting your dog on a Forest Service hiking trail, you'll be glad this rule exists."

Environmentalists interpreted the rule as an attempt to skirt delays expected from delisting litigation.

"The shame of it is we spent so much time and effort trying to recover wolves, and were within spitting distance of recovery," said Doug Honnold, managing attorney for the Northern Rockies office of Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm. "But instead of securing those recovery gains and building on them, Fish and Wildlife Services is throwing them away. . . . They want the right to kill wolves willy-nilly."

Honnold said he would file suit and seek an injunction against the rule on behalf of environmental organizations including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Once ranging from central Mexico to the Arctic, gray wolves were killed off for decades, and their population had virtually disappeared from the American West by the 1930s. They were listed as endangered in 1974.

Since they were reintroduced to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996, their population has spread throughout the northern Rockies region, swelling to more than 1,500, and it's growing by about 24% annually, according to wildlife officials.

The rule issued Thursday relies on a revision of endangered-species regulations that allows lethal force against "nonessential experimental populations" like the gray wolf under certain circumstances. The section was created as a compromise with ranchers who were worried about a growing wolf population preying on livestock. Thursday's revision was the third change to the gray-wolf-reintroduction rule since it was written in 1994.

Currently, gray wolves cannot be killed unless they are preying on livestock or on a dog on private property, or are the main culprit behind dwindling populations of animals such as deer, elk and moose.

The rule change issued Thursday would ease the burden of proof to justify a wolf kill. State agencies would only need to show that wolf predation had been one factor among others for a decreasing population of ungulates, such as elk, deer or moose. A wolf threatening a dog also could be killed. None of the rule provisions apply to wolves within national parks or outside central Idaho and the greater Yellowstone area.

A state agency that wants to kill wolves preying on ungulate populations would have to file a lengthy wolf management plan with Fish and Wildlife. Officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana said they had no immediate plan to do so.

"The state of Idaho is more interested in delisting than in changes to [this] rule, which is kind of a stopgap, or an interim measure . . . should delisting be delayed," said Steve Nadeau, an Idaho Fish and Game official who oversees the state's wolf program. "We have no plan to use [the rule] unless wolves are not delisted anytime soon."

The new rule is scheduled to take effect in about a month, around the time the delisting decision is to be announced.

Bangs, who helped lead the reintroduction of gray wolves when the tri-state area had about 10 wolves, said that most elk and other hoofed big-game animal populations were not greatly affected by wolves and that more wolves -- about 150 annually -- probably would be killed for preying on livestock.

"This is absolutely not a get-out-of-jail-free card for wolf killing," Bangs said. "This is a highly structured scientific-based process to address real problems. . . . It won't change the [overall] number of wolves, but it will change distribution and in a few areas the number of wolves."

Last January, Republican Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter incensed environmentalists when he told a group of hunters on the Idaho statehouse steps that he wanted to be the first to sign up to kill wolves once they were delisted.

tami.abdollah@latimes.com


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Reality Check on Wolves, 3 stories [Re: Mira Trapper] #552548
01/31/08 12:43 PM
01/31/08 12:43 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
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Mira Trapper  Offline OP
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
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As if anti HUNT groups really were concerned about establishing a sound balanced ecosystem with healthy animal populations.

http://tinyurl.com/22dk9t

Conservation Groups Challenge Federal Wolf-Killing Rule


January 28, 2008

MISSOULA, Mont.- Conservation groups are fighting a Bush administration plan that would allow the states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana to kill half of the Rocky Mountain wolf population, including by shooting wolves from the air, while they are still protected under the Endangered Species Act. In an effort to bar states from aerial gunning and other state-sponsored killing of wolves, seven conservation groups filed a suit in federal district court today to stop the implementation of the rule.

The new rule lowers the bar for wolf killing when a state determines that wolves may be having some impact on populations of elk, deer, or other wild ungulates. The Bush Administration says the rule change is necessary because the previous standard required states to show that wolves are the primary cause of a decline in wild ungulate numbers. That threshold has proven impossible to meet because nearly all elk herds in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana are above population objectives, and wolves have never been determined to have primarily caused a population decline.

Today's action will allow the states to kill all but 600 of the approximately 1,500 wolves in the region. The rule applies to wolves in central Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone area – descendents of the roughly 60 wolves that were reintroduced to those regions in 1995 and 1996.

"This is a giant step backward. There is absolutely no reason to begin a wholesale slaughter of the region's wolves," said Suzanne Stone, northern Rockies wolf conservation specialist for Defenders of Wildlife. "Yet that is exactly what the federal government is willing to allow the states to do: wipe out hundreds of the wolves our nation has worked so hard to recover."

"In this rule, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is either downplaying the threats to wolves, or it has forgotten all the trigger-happy statements made by Wyoming and Idaho officials who want to kill as many wolves as possible, as soon as possible," says Louisa Willcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The rule remains in effect only until the administration removes wolves from the list of endangered species, an action that is expected to come next month. Nonetheless, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service adopted the rule in response to the state of Wyoming, which insisted that states have the right to kill wolves affecting elk herds in any way even if a federal court overturns wolf delisting in the Northern Rockies.

"Deer and elk populations are thriving in this region. There's absolutely no reason to begin slaughtering wolves, other than to please a handful of special interests," said Sierra Club representative Melanie Stein. "This is another example of politics trumping science in the Bush administration. Federal and state agencies are tripping over each other, and our wildlife are suffering as a result."

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity noted that the rule might allow wolves to be killed for their beneficial effect of dispersing elk from sensitive stream sides even when the elk population as a whole continues to rise. Robinson continued that "the rule harkens back to a period in which wolves' natural role of maintaining the balance of nature is seen as a problem."

"This rule is nothing less than a declaration of war on wolves in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana," said John Grandy, Ph.D., senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "After decades of progress, the Service is abandoning all that we have achieved for wolf conservation and returning to the short-sighted persecution and extermination policies of the past."

Earth justice represents Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club,Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, and Friends of the Clearwater in the lawsuit.

-30-


Not a clue about CONSERVATION of ECOSYSTEMS although they pretend they are full of answers using lies and misrepresentations which deny original goals for Wolf Management have been achieved. One also needs to remember that Dr. David Mech was the main WOLF EXPERT often quoted by the recovery people and offered hero status when he undertook the recovery program and put into effect. Now the people referring to his team as experts a few short years ago are demonizing him and his team because they are concerned with what wolves being over abundant will mean to pack health and the over all health of ecosystems where wolves are the primary hunters for 365 days of the year. .

 Originally Posted By: Mira Trapper
http://tinyurl.com/yosj29


Federal rule to allow more hunting of gray wolves
template_bas
template_bas
The loosening of restrictions is a 'safety valve' for states, in anticipation of a legal fight over delisting the species as endangered.
By Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 25, 2008
State game agencies and private citizens would be allowed to kill federally protected gray wolves that threatened dogs or seriously decreased deer, elk or moose populations in parts of the northern Rocky Mountains, under a federal rule announced Thursday.

The regulation comes a month ahead of the expected federal decision to take the gray wolf off the endangered species list, which would allow wolves to be hunted. That decision is likely to face protracted litigation.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services officials said Thursday that the revised provision would allow for states to deal with areas where wolf activity is affecting wildlife populations while delisting is tied up in court.

"This rule, if it goes forward, could provide a safety valve for the states during the two to three years while the delisting goes through litigation," said Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife's wolf recovery coordinator. "Whether this rule ever gets used or not, who knows. But if you're protecting your dog on a Forest Service hiking trail, you'll be glad this rule exists."

Environmentalists interpreted the rule as an attempt to skirt delays expected from delisting litigation.

"The shame of it is we spent so much time and effort trying to recover wolves, and were within spitting distance of recovery," said Doug Honnold, managing attorney for the Northern Rockies office of Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm. "But instead of securing those recovery gains and building on them, Fish and Wildlife Services is throwing them away. . . . They want the right to kill wolves willy-nilly."

Honnold said he would file suit and seek an injunction against the rule on behalf of environmental organizations including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Once ranging from central Mexico to the Arctic, gray wolves were killed off for decades, and their population had virtually disappeared from the American West by the 1930s. They were listed as endangered in 1974.

Since they were reintroduced to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996, their population has spread throughout the northern Rockies region, swelling to more than 1,500, and it's growing by about 24% annually, according to wildlife officials.

The rule issued Thursday relies on a revision of endangered-species regulations that allows lethal force against "nonessential experimental populations" like the gray wolf under certain circumstances. The section was created as a compromise with ranchers who were worried about a growing wolf population preying on livestock. Thursday's revision was the third change to the gray-wolf-reintroduction rule since it was written in 1994.

Currently, gray wolves cannot be killed unless they are preying on livestock or on a dog on private property, or are the main culprit behind dwindling populations of animals such as deer, elk and moose.

The rule change issued Thursday would ease the burden of proof to justify a wolf kill. State agencies would only need to show that wolf predation had been one factor among others for a decreasing population of ungulates, such as elk, deer or moose. A wolf threatening a dog also could be killed. None of the rule provisions apply to wolves within national parks or outside central Idaho and the greater Yellowstone area.

A state agency that wants to kill wolves preying on ungulate populations would have to file a lengthy wolf management plan with Fish and Wildlife. Officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana said they had no immediate plan to do so.

"The state of Idaho is more interested in delisting than in changes to [this] rule, which is kind of a stopgap, or an interim measure . . . should delisting be delayed," said Steve Nadeau, an Idaho Fish and Game official who oversees the state's wolf program. "We have no plan to use [the rule] unless wolves are not delisted anytime soon."

The new rule is scheduled to take effect in about a month, around the time the delisting decision is to be announced.

Bangs, who helped lead the reintroduction of gray wolves when the tri-state area had about 10 wolves, said that most elk and other hoofed big-game animal populations were not greatly affected by wolves and that more wolves -- about 150 annually -- probably would be killed for preying on livestock.

"This is absolutely not a get-out-of-jail-free card for wolf killing," Bangs said. "This is a highly structured scientific-based process to address real problems. . . . It won't change the [overall] number of wolves, but it will change distribution and in a few areas the number of wolves."

Last January, Republican Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter incensed environmentalists when he told a group of hunters on the Idaho statehouse steps that he wanted to be the first to sign up to kill wolves once they were delisted.

tami.abdollah@latimes.com


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Reality Check on Wolves, 3 stories [Re: Mira Trapper] #552551
01/31/08 12:47 PM
01/31/08 12:47 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
trapper
Mira Trapper  Offline OP
trapper

Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
The Rhetoric from these groups never ever matches the truth.

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/01/29/top/75st_080129_wolves.txt


Groups sue over wolves
By EVE BYRON - Independent Record - 01/29/08
FWP photo - Three adult wolves, part of a larger pack, are pictured.
Seven conservation groups made good on a threat last week to file a lawsuit challenging a temporary federal rule that would loosen restrictions on when gray wolves can be shot in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

The legal documents filed in U.S. District Court in Missoula Monday morning ask that the new federal rule, also published Monday, be overturned, according to Louisa Willcox with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The case has been assigned to Chief Judge Donald Molloy.

“The fundamental issue is that we’re so close to wolf recovery in the Northern Rockies and close to a success story. But the Bush Administration seems intent on reversing that,” Willcox said. “We’re spitting distance from recovery and now we’ll be moving in the wrong direction.”

The conservation groups are concerned that more than half of the wolf population could be killed under this regulation, even while being protected by the Endangered Species Act. They point to statements made by officials in Idaho and Wyoming that encourage lowering the number of wolves in those states.

Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said he wasn’t surprised by the lawsuit being filed, but was dismayed at its content.

“I was kind of disappointed at a lot of the stuff in there,” Bangs said. “This will not allow hundreds of wolves to be killed, and we don’t think it will affect the wolf population.

“I think they’re tuning the crowd up for delisting; they’re just kind of rallying the troops with a lot of rhetoric.”

Montana officials say they have no intention at this time of implementing the rule — in part because they’re meeting later this month to consider instituting a wolf-hunting season due to the success of the wolf re-introduction, begun in 1995, and they think the hunting season will keep wolf numbers in check.

Gray wolves had roamed in the Rockies but were put on the Endangered Species list in 1973 after being hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states. More than 1,500 gray wolves now populate the Northern Rockies, with 89 breeding pairs.

That far exceeds the recovery goal of 300 wolves and 30 breeding pairs, so the FWS is considering the species removal from federal protection by the end of February. In fact, federal officials are so pleased by the species’ recovery that since 2004 they’ve had Montana and Idaho replace the FWS as the head of wolf management programs in those states. Wyoming’s wolf management plan only recently was adopted.

Montana alone is home to about 375 wolves and 40 breeding pairs, well above the minimum population requirements of 10 breeding pairs and 100 wolves.

The new rule allows wolves to be shot if they’re attacking stock animals or dogs, or if they are having a “major impact” on deer, elk or moose populations.

Unveiled in the federal register Monday, the regulation is supposed to go into effect Feb. 28 after a 30-day “cooling off” period. It would remain in effect only until wolves are taken off the list of endangered species; but even if the federal government decides to do that this month, officials expect lawsuits to challenge that move. The new regulation provides a “safety valve “to wolf managers if the issue is tied up in court for an extended period, FWS officials said last week. Bangs said he expects the number of wolves killed under the new regulation will be fewer than what’s being killed now for preying on livestock.

The special regulation is applicable only in the southern half of Montana, most of central Idaho and throughout Wyoming, but not in national parks.

Along with the NRDC, other plaintiffs in the case include the Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, and Friends of the Clearwater. They’re being represented by Earthjustice. Most of Montana’s wolves are in western Montana and the greater Yellowstone area, but wolves have been reported in the Helena area, including on MacDonald Pass, the Elkhorns and as far east as the Big and Little Belt mountain ranges.

Reporter Eve Byron: 447-4076 or eve.byron@helenair.com


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Reality Check on Wolves, 3 stories [Re: Mira Trapper] #552776
01/31/08 03:36 PM
01/31/08 03:36 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
trapper
Mira Trapper  Offline OP
trapper

Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Two more considerations that need to be viewed in spite of the PRESERVATIONISTS hatred of CONSERVATION



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... olves.html

Thriving Gray Wolf May Come Off U.S. Endangered List

Click here to find out more!
William Campbell
for National Geographic Today
January 22, 2003

By late spring or early summer, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service may propose removing the western population of gray wolf from the endangered species list.

The population has made a comeback in the Northern Rockies, which represents a significant achievement for the wolf—and for conservation. But the delisting proposal has sparked debate among federal and state agencies, and private environmental groups about whether the wolf should indeed roam free of the endangered designation.


http://tinyurl.com/2txgcg


U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service News
Release
January 29, 2007

Interior Department Announces Delisting of Western Great Lakes Wolves; Proposed Delisting of Northern Rocky Mountain Wolves

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U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Home



Contacts

David Eisenhauer, 202-208-5634
Georgia Parham 812-334-4261 ext. 203
Sharon Rose 303-236-4580

Separate Actions Part of Larger Recovery Effort



Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett today announced that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is removing the western Great Lakes population of gray wolves from the federal list of threatened and endangered species and proposing to remove the northern Rocky Mountain population of gray wolves from the list. The two separate actions are being taken in recognition of the success of gray wolf recovery efforts under the Endangered Species Act.



"Wolves have recovered in the western Great Lakes because efforts to save them from extinction have been a model of cooperation, flexibility, and hard work," Scarlett said. "This same spirit of collaboration has helped gray wolves in the Northern Rockies exceed their recovery goals to the point where they are biologically ready to be delisted. States, tribes, conservation groups, federal agencies and citizens of both regions can be proud of their roles in saving this icon of wilderness."


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