Perhaps as soon as this week, gray wolves roaming across the northern Rocky Mountains may come a step closer to losing the protections they now enjoy under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Northern Rockies wolves were first delisted from the ESA on Feb. 27, but legal challenges derailed that.
A decision to delist again would cap a confusing year in which Idaho, Montana and Wyoming were granted wolf management duties, a lawsuit was filed by environmentalists and the unregulated shooting of wolves across most of Wyoming prompted a federal judge in Montana to rule against the delisting. Had that ruling not came down when it did early last summer, the states would have opened the first hunting season on wolves in northwest Wyoming and in Idaho and Montana.
As many as 428 wild gray wolves could have been targeted by hunters in Idaho this fall under a plan approved by the Idaho Fish and Game Commission in May.
Further confounding the issue was last week's move by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reinstate ESA protections for wolves in the northern Rockies. The decision to relist wolves was meant to comply with the July 18 ruling by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula that immediately restored ESA protections for northern Rockies wolves.
"We had to do it for procedural reasons," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena.
Despite the confusing seesaw nature of the relisting-delisting debate, the public remained engaged enough to submit about 240,000 comments on the resubmitted delisting rule during a 30-day comment period that wrapped up last month. The agency hasn't indicated the level of support that the public gave to the idea of once again pulling federal protections from wolves.
Bangs said a decision to publish the resubmitted rule in the federal register could happen as early as this week. He said the final decision to delist or not will be made by Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Among their many concerns, environmentalists have criticized the Fish and Wildlife Service's rush to review those comments, a project they've already completed. Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative of Defenders of Wildlife, said the agency must have read between 25,000 and 30,000 public comments each day.
"I think it's a land speed record," she said.
Stone and others are also concerned about the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to have the public comment on the same delisting rule that was discredited by Judge Molloy. She called the move a blatant attempt to remove federal protections in the waning hours of the Bush administration.
"They're trying to beat that Jan. 20 deadline when this administration leaves office," she said. "It looks like this administration is pushing this mess into the courts again."
However, unlike the first delisting rule handed down last winter, this one may not include the state of Wyoming. Speculation on that is tied to Molloy's July ruling, in which he specifically picked apart Wyoming's wolf management plan. The judge seemed particularly concerned by the Fish and Wildlife Service's approval of the state's 2007 management plan even though it contained provisions earlier deemed inadequate by the agency.
In the minds of environmentalists, Fish and Wildlife Service officials have never adequately explained the about-face that led them to include Wyoming in last February's delisting. Stone and others point to correspondence from the Fish and Wildlife Service to officials in the three northern Rockies states that explained why Wyoming's plan was inadequate and why the state couldn't be included in the delisting.
One of those letters in particular, a 2003 message sent to the states by the then-director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Steven Williams, states that the agency must consider "the three state management plans in their totality." Environmentalists say the agency would contradict this requirement if it sought to delist Idaho and Montana wolves but left those in Wyoming federally protected. They feel wolves can only be delisted in the northern Rockies when adequate management regulations are in place in all three states.
Under Wyoming's management plan, the state maintains a dual classification of wolves, with those in the northwest corner of the state considered trophy animals, which can only be hunted under strict rules and seasons. Everywhere else in Wyoming, wolves are designated as predators, which allows them to be shot on sight at any time of the year, one of the things Molloy objected to.
The decision to include or pull Wyoming from the new delisting plan will be made by Director Hall.
It's even possible that Idaho could be dropped from the delisting rule, Bangs warned. He said the agency is looking at a law passed by the Idaho Legislature after the February delisting that allows citizens to kill wolves without a permit whenever they are annoying, disturbing or "worrying" livestock or domestic animals.
"We're looking at that specifically, too," Bangs said.
Defenders of Wildlife was among the 12 conservation groups, which also included Hailey-based Western Watersheds Project, that sued to have the February delisting reversed. The groups claimed, among other things, that existing regulations would not protect wolves and allow them to interbreed with wolves living in the other states.
Stone said that under the current rule, the states would only have to maintain 400 to 450 wolves in all the northern Rockies, a number she claims isn't enough to ensure genetic exchange.
"That means we could lose a thousand or more wolves under this plan," she said.
Environmentalists are also concerned by what appears to be a significant decline in Yellowstone wolf numbers this year, and they're pointing to that as another reason wolves shouldn't be delisted. Though no one is sure why the numbers have dropped, some suspect a canine disease.
Bangs seems well aware that concerns about delisting will be many.
"Everything about wolves gets challenged," he said.
A decision to publish the resubmitted rule in the federal register could happen as early as this week. Photo by Willy Cook
