Wolf Hunts: U.S. gray wolves, no longer protected by Endangered Species Act, are hunted down

It's official. The gray wolves of the U.S. northern Rockies are getting exterminated.

Government agencies are calling it "predator management" or "harvesting" but the numbers are staggering. In Idaho, from a population of 750 to 1,000, hunters are being allowed to reduce the wolf population to just 150 animals. That's up to 85% of the population - gone. Montana intends to take down 220 of their 556 to 645 wolves. That's nearly 35% to 40% wiped out. Many scientists are concerned that the reduced populations will collapse as they will be so widely dispersed that healthy reproductive patterns will be difficult to maintain. They will literally be spread to thin to sustain themselves.

How has this come about? Weren't wolves protected by the Endangered Species Act at one time? Was it the result of political lobbying by ranchers and hunters? Yes on both accounts.

As reported by James Gibson in the Earth Island Journal, "The recent anti-wolf campaign represents an extraordinary cultural and political victory by the far-right wing in the Rocky Mountains. A loose coalition of some ranchers, hunters, and anti-government zealots demonized the gray wolves reintroduced to Montana and Idaho from Canada in the mid 1990s by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They cast the animals as huge, aggressive, disease-ridden monsters bent on ravaging livestock, elk, deer, and even people. Wolves became symbolic representations of the hated federal government. In time, both the mainstream Republican and Democratic Parties came to accept this vision of demonic wolves invading from Canada.

In April, 2011, Senator John Tester, Democrat of Montana, facing a tough 2012 reelection challenge from Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg, led a campaign among fellow Democrats to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act using a federal budget bill rider, while Idaho’s Congressman Mike Simpson did the same among House Republicans. The rider passed with little dissent, marking the first time a species has been removed from the protections of the Endangered Species Act by Congress."

That's a key point in all of this: For the first time, politicians - rather than scientists - have decided whether an animal is endangered and entitled to protection under the Endangered Species Act. The danger here is not just the immediate and ongoing threat to the wolves; there are also the implications that this action can mean for a host of other species whose protection under the law might be inconvenient for some lobbyist-represented industry. Do you see a slippery slope building here? If so, you're not alone.

A long list of environmental organizations have been fighting this change in how the Endangered Species Act is wielded. There have been lawsuits and legal appeals - and there will certainly be more.

The Center for Biological Diversity reported, "The Center and its allies are in court to challenge the congressional rider that removed these wolves from the endangered species list. 'The Endangered Species Act rightly put scientists, not politicians, in charge of deciding which species get protection,' said the Center's Noah Greenwald. 'Wolves once roamed most of North America, but were wiped off the map by intolerance and persecution -- which persist today. Wolf recovery is far from complete.'"

But for the moment, gray wolves are more than important natural predators which maintain balance in the Rocky Mountains ecosystem. They're also, now, targets.

Click here to view pictures taken by Maureen Mitra of the ongoing hunt for gray Wolves.

Read more about the wolf hunts in Earth Island Journal.
Read about what is being done on the legal side in The Center for Biological Diversity.

Northern Rockies Gray Wolves: passing budget legislation could seal their fate

With important budget legislation needing to be passed, the machinations of tit-for-tat politics was in high gear this past week. Beneath the headlines of government shutdowns being avoided and federal funding for the remainder of the year being passed, there hides the legislative rider or amendment that gets slipped in to grease the wheels of political progress.

This week, the gray wolf, which has been the subject of a back and forth battle in the U.S. Rocky Mountain states over its status as an endangered species, appears to be once again in the cross hairs of state-approved eradication meant to satisfy cattlemen and sport hunters.

But of even greater potential concern is what the legislative rider's language seems to imply regarding the future ability of the Endangered Species Act to protect any animal or plant from economic or non-environmental interests that could threaten a species' survival.

As reported by Associated Press, " The White House is poised to accept a budget bill that includes an unprecedented end-run around Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in five Western states — the first time Congress has targeted a species protected under the 37-year-old law.

Lawmakers describe the provision in the spending bill as a necessary intervention in a wildlife dilemma that some say has spun out of control. Sixty-six wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies from Canada in the mid-1990s; there are now at least 1,650.

But legal experts warn the administration's support of lifting protections for the animals opens the door to future meddling by lawmakers catering to anti-wildlife interests.

The endangered act has long been reviled by conservatives who see it as a hindrance to economic development. Now, the administration's support for the wolf provision signals that protections for even the most imperiled animals, fish and plants are negotiable given enough political pressure, experts said.

'The president could have used some political capital to influence this and he didn't,' said Patrick Parenteau, a professor of environmental law from the Vermont Law School. 'The message to the environmental community is, don't count on the administration to be there for the protection of endangered species.'

Environmentalists still count Obama as an ally on other issues, ranging from climate change and wilderness preservation to oil and gas exploration. Yet experts in wildlife law say that in the scramble to pass the budget, the administration is circumventing one of the country's bedrock environmental laws."

This is an issue that dates back to the prior Bush administration and the many attempts it made to thwart or neutralize the Endangered Species Act or the EPA's Clean Air Act, often by trying to eliminate independent scientific research and recommendations from the process and putting the final determination of ecological or environmental decisions solely in the hands of politicians.

It would appear that, with a new administration, we are faced with that challenge once again.

"We are having the worst attack on the Endangered Species Act in 30 years while we have a Democratic Senate and a Democratic White House," said Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). "They are trying to shut citizens and scientists out of the endangered species process."

Organizations like the Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, and others have been fighting for the continued survival of the Northern Rockies' gray wolves. It has been a long battle but also a classic example of what can happen to an ecosystem when it loses a primary predator. When the gray wolf population was thinned out to protect cattle interests, rodent and deer populations exploded which threatened grazing land.

With environmental protections, the number of gray wolves has steadily increased. However, the total number does not reflect the isolated nature of individual or regional wolf packs. The loss of just a few wolves can have a disastrous effect on the fate of an entire pack, and so the fabric that makes up an entire wolf population is very fragile and not as resilient as politicians or the cattle industry lobbyists would have you believe.

“Tens of millions of dollars were spent building up the wolf population in the northern Rockies and giving wolves a toehold in Washington and Oregon," says CBD's Suckling. "Now, in one fell swoop, that investment is being swept away. Wolves in Washington and Oregon may disappear in a few years. Those in the northern Rockies will begin plummeting and may be lost in a few decades.”

Read about the gray wolf in Yahoo News.
Read a press release from CBD.
Send a letter to President Obama regarding preserving the gray wolves.

Northern Rockies Wolves: once again under the gun

Wolves are under the gun again, literally.

Until recently, Northern Rockies gray wolves had been on the Endangered Species List and therefore protected from extermination. While their numbers had been recovering, many conservation organizations felt the the government's decision to remove the wolf from the endangered species list was premature. It was questionable as to whether there are sufficient number of breeding pairs. But, with the increasing numbers there is the inevitable occasional loss of livestock, and so the future fate of the wolf was put into question once again as pressure mounted to find a way to placate ranchers with some sort of "acceptable" sustainable population figure.

Unfortunately, it was decided that the magic number was to be less than the current population. In August, it was reported that Idaho was issuing over 10,000 hunting licenses for the taking of 220 wolves - out of a population reported to be somewhere between 846 and 1,000. Conservation organizations rallied their legal forces to reinstate the wolves' former status and a final decision is in the hands of a judge as to an injunction against the Idaho hunt.

But in the meantime, the hunt has begun and the first kills have been reported.

And the issue is spilling over into other states. Montana is preparing to open up wolf hunting on September 15th. And there has been concern emanating from Oregon where a very small number of wolves exists, a fledgling splinter group from the larger Northern Rockies population. Conservationists are concerned that, with the reduction of wolves through open hunting, the populations ranging across all these states will be threatened due to a lack of mating prospects and lost continuum of a healthy genetic pool.

Interestingly, this is the same issue expressed regarding the loss of oceanic predators like great whites - that the loss of one population can impact another population many miles away, perhaps a population even in so-called "protected" waters, due to a loss of the gene pool mix within these migratory animals.

According to Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative of the Defenders of Wildlife, "Idaho hosts the core of the Northern Rockies wolf population, with approximately 1,000 wolves. By wiping out 220 wolves, the state will cripple the regional wolf population by isolating wolves into disconnected subgroups incapable of genetic or ecological sustainability."

"It's only a matter of time," warned Stone, "before Idaho's state legislature enforces their demand that all wolves be removed 'by whatever means necessary,' which is still the state's official policy on wolves."

Read story in Environmental News Service.

From Wolves to Sharks: undoing 11th hour damage from a prior administration

In December and January, I posted items regarding the previous U.S. administration's 11th actions to change or loosened environmental protections. These ranged from removal of the Gray Wolf from the endangered species list to allowing federal agencies to move forward on projects without consulting with environmental experts to looser air quality standards. (Read prior postings: Dec. '08 / Jan. '09)

• The challenge was that to undo the damage required a complex and lengthy process. But an amendment to a spending bill will empower President Obama to reverse the rule (one of the few times that something tacked on to a bill made any sense).
• Shortly after his inauguration, the president ordered all pending Bush regulations to be frozen. The Dept. of the Interior has cancelled oil and gas drilling leases near national parks (another piece of 11th hour chicanery).
• In addition, the president has directed the EPA to reconsider its denial of California's request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for automobiles (California's proposed regulations are stricter than federal standards).

Shark News!

Additionally, the Shark Conservation Act (H.R.81), that was making progress in 2008 but ultimately languished and was reintroduced by Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo, was passed by the House of Representatives on Monday. H.R. 81 requires that all caught sharks must have their fins naturally attached. This will allow better enforcement of anti-finning laws and better management of catches (it's difficult to determine the number and species of sharks being taken when all there is for inspection is a hold full of fins).

The Senate must pass the legislation and many of the NGOs are lining up support efforts to make sure voices are heard. Check in with Oceana.org to see what you can do. (Oceana press release.)

Gray Wolf out in the cold: endangered status in question

In the last days of the current administration, controversial environmental decisions are still being made: the latest being a proposal to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list in several northern Midwest states. Environmental groups have promised a swift reaction, with a legal suit as one possible reaction as has been done several times in the past.

The number of gray wolves has been slowly increasing since its earliest protected status during the Clinton administration and there have been several unsuccessful attempts in the past to remove the wolves from the list. The gray wolf is a perfect example of the importance of top predators. While a bane to cattle ranchers, when wolves were heavily hunted then populations of animals ranging from deer to the smallest rodents exploded - trading a rancher's problem for new problem's for farmers and flora in wooded areas.

Organizations including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity have said they will be taking action, both political and legal, to stop the proposed change in status for the gray wolf.




On the West Coast, the State of California has filed suit against the federal government, charging that the Bush administration illegally changed provisions in the Endangered Species Act when they mandated the elimination of independent scientific review of projects subject to federal review and, specifically, the new rule imposed that eliminated consideration of the effects of greenhouse gases on protected species and their habitat. California has taken on the federal government in the past regarding environmental issues and has won practically every case.