|
Feds hurt Wyoming's efforts to settle wolf issue
By Phil Washburn
This document was published online on Friday, November 28, 2008
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had an opportunity recently to make real progress on the seemingly unending wolf de-listing issue - and they blinked.
Instead of a careful response to litigation triggered by earlier efforts to remove wolves from Endangered Species Act protections, the agency is pushing for a careless new plan in a rushed process designed to fail.
Instead of addressing genetic-diversity concerns by enhancing natural dispersal, the USFWS is proposing to set a dangerous precedent by using expensive, heavy-handed methods that include trucking wolves from state to state, artificial insemination and pup-swapping.
Instead of helping Wyoming shore up the deficiencies in its management plan, the agency is telling us to fend for ourselves.They doom us to many more years of court haggling on an issue that already has exhausted us all.
In short, instead of taking Wyoming a step forward, the Fish & Wildlife Service is attempting to knock us three steps backward.
When the agency first proposed removing wolves from the Endangered Species list in February, we at the Greater Yellowstone Coalition decided recovery had reached a point that the long-term interests of the wolf would be best served by thoughtful, balanced, science-based state management.
This recent attempt to de-list the wolf only in Idaho and Montana is neither thoughtful nor balanced nor science-based.
For wolves to thrive in their proper role atop the ecological food chain, they must be recovered enough to manage them as wildlife. This includes natural dispersal and genetic exchange - an inevitable outcome if wolves are given the opportunity to mix normally with populations in central Idaho and beyond.
With its politically charged proposal to de-list wolves along artificial political boundaries, the USFWS is ignoring Wyoming's recent good-faith efforts to fix impediments to their ability to manage wolves and denying the Legislature an opportunity to fix our plan's biggest flaw: its shoot-on-sight predator zone.
And the agency is considering genetic exchange tools normally used to bring species back from the brink of extinction, not to sustain a recovered population.
The political leaders in Wyoming must continue to forge ahead, fixing the inadequacies with its statutes, because one day management will be turned over to the state. This latest proposal may be a bump in the road, but we only have a voice to criticize this process if we fix our plan.
The purpose of the Endangered Species Act has always been to recover an animal's population and then, once deemed recovered based on sound science, turn management over to states. Careful, science-based state-management plans that consider the interests of all those with a stake in wolf management - wildlife enthusiasts, ranchers, hunters and conservationists - always serve the wolves and the public best.
A credible and responsible approach by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service would be to provide Wyoming with reasonable time to consider legislative initiatives that have already been proposed.
Instead, the agency has provided a clear example of why politics should be left out of wildlife management.
(Phil Washburn of Pinedale is board chairman of the Bozeman-based Greater Yellowstone Coalition.)
|
Popular Searches