For the week of March 5 - 11, 2003

Suit seeks grazing halt to protect wolves

Focus is on SNRA allotments

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

In the latest chapter of an ongoing wildlife dispute, a coalition of Idaho environmental groups is asking a U.S. District Court to order the closure of several livestock grazing allotments to protect gray wolves from their instincts.

The request by the Idaho Conservation League and Western Watersheds Project is an attempt to protect wolves from being trapped or shot after preying on sheep in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, where wolves have gotten into trouble since being introduced to Idaho in 1996 and 1997.

Federal District Judge Lynn Winmill, of Pocatello, partially granted a similar request in 2002 when he ordered federal agencies not to kill wolves in response to conflicts between livestock and wolves on the SNRA.

"But that injunction has now expired, and no remedial relief is in place to prevent ‘substantial impairment’ of wolves or wolf-related recreational values on the SNRA for 2003 or future years," according to an injunction request filed with the court Feb. 21.

"Now is the deadline to close these allotments or stop killing wolves in the SNRA," said Western Watersheds Project Executive Director Jon Marvel.

Citing violations by the Forest Service in its management of the SNRA, Winmill ruled in June, 2002, that wildlife and recreational experiences take precedent over livestock grazing in the management of the SNRA.

"The (SNRA) statute is clear," the judge wrote. "Congress identifies, as one of the primary ‘values’ of the SNRA, the conservation and development of ‘wildlife,’ which would include the gray wolf. Certain other values, including grazing, were to be developed conditionally—that is, developed only ‘insofar as their utilization will not substantially impair’ the development of wildlife such as the gray wolf.’"

Idaho Conservation League central Idaho director Linn Kincannon said the Forest Service has done little to respond to the judge’s ruling.

"Even with the judge’s ruling last year, the Forest Service has done nothing to alter livestock grazing in the SNRA to help keep sheep off the wolves’ dinner table and wolves off the Wildlife Service’s hit list," Kincannon said. "We will continue to press for wolf protection…They’ve got to follow the law."

But Winmill has not yet delivered a ruling on a timetable under which the U.S. Forest Service must remedy violations of the Rescissions and Organic acts, which, together, require up-to-date environmental analyses on grazing allotments and analyses on whether grazing is "substantially impairing" wolf populations.

Sawtooth Forest officials have been tight-lipped about the lawsuits. Last summer, they referred inquiries to the Intermountain Region headquarters office in Ogden, Utah. Later, inquiries were forwarded to the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

"We’re certainly taking this very seriously," said Department of Justice spokesperson Dana Perino. "We recognize that there will be an impact on Idaho, and we will be working diligently with our client agency, the Forest Service."

Sawtooth National Forest spokesman Ed Waldapfel said only that the Forest Service is waiting for Winmill’s ruling on a timetable.

Recent monitoring indicates wolves are once again returning to the SNRA and surrounding areas, despite the complete destruction of two SNRA wolf packs in the last three years.

Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Roy Heberter, who supervised wolf reintroduction in Idaho, said at least two pairs of wolves are known to be in the same areas occupied by the former Whitehawk and White Cloud packs.

"It is vital that these wolves and possible incipient packs in and around the SNRA be protected from control actions, which would only perpetuate the substantial impairment of SNRA values," Heberger said. "It is certainly foreseeable that the wolves now known to be present in and around the SNRA will come into conflicts with livestock in coming months, absent significant changes in livestock grazing management on the SNRA."

Stan Boyd, executive director of the Idaho Woolgrowers Association, said the group’s motion to close grazing allotments shows that environmental groups simply want to remove livestock from public lands.

"These folks are using wolf recovery as a tool to pursue other agendas," Boyd said.

The Idaho Conservation League and the Western Watersheds Project sued the Forest Service in 2001, when two wolves in the Whitehawk Pack were killed for attacking sheep in the Sawtooth Valley that June.

Since then, federal wolf managers have killed the entire Whitehawk pack, generating widespread opposition from around the world.

In the past three years, more than 30 wolves have been killed or moved out of the White Cloud Mountains and the East Fork of the Salmon River valley adjacent to the recreation area.

In the past three years, at least 30 wolves have been killed or removed in and around the recreation area due to conflicts with livestock, the groups said.

About 4,470 sheep and 2,500 cattle graze on 28 Forest Service allotments there, they said.

 

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