Thunder In The West: Wolves Art Isberg
is loosely termed “environmentalists,” (read anti-hunters,) advocating the sen- timent that wild wolves should be rein- troduced back into the Rocky Mountains where they had not been seen in any real number for decades, and specifi cally into Yellowstone National Park. The last known wolf was offi cially killed in Yellowstone by United States Fish and Wildlife Service people 44 years earlier in 1926.
A The legalese driving the reintro-
duction of such a large, powerful, apex predator was codifi ed under the Endan- gered Species Act of 1973, to be carried out by the USFWS. Immediate and vo- cal opposition to this plan was voiced not only by the surrounding states’ big game departments of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, but also cattle and sheep ranchers, sportsmen both locally and nationwide, big-game outfi tters, and much of the general public in that area. Supporters of this reintroduction were not only the USFWS, but such virulent anti-hunting organizations as the De- fenders of Wildlife, and their allies with high sounding names as Earth Justice, Humane Society of America, Oregon Wild, National Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and others who proclaimed wolves were needed to curb Yellow- stone’s burgeoning elk herd protected much of the year by remaining inside park boundaries. Defenders also is very big on demanding that a “balance of nature” should be restored, suggesting nature had been out of balance with the demise of the last wolf decades earlier. That elk are artifi cially fed every winter inside the park, and that more than 6,000 head of bison have been either killed by hunters once they leave the park in late winter, or are loaded up and taken to slaughter houses, strangely did not move Defenders to initiate lawsuits or worry about the balance of nature. The far-reaching issue of wolf re-
introduction immediately became a hot bed issue of states rights opposed to fed- eral law. The states said they, and they
s early as the 1970s, there were rumblings from what
alone, should have the right to decide if they wanted wolves introduced inside their borders, the government saying Yellowstone was federal land and they had the right to bring wolves in if they decided to. The battle lines were sharply drawn. The Idaho state legislature immediately passed a bill forbidding their fi sh and game department from cooperating with the introduction plan in any way whatsoever. The Wyoming Farm Bureau threatened law suits if wolves were turned loose in their state, yet the plan moved forward under the direction of the USFWS. It was known at that time small numbers of wolves had actually wandered into Montana from Canada, but none stayed to form packs or breed young. By the early 1990s, within the con-
fi nes of the ESA, there were two choices for wolf reintroduction. The fi rst was to let wolves return, over time, naturally on their own into the northern Rockies. But previous lessons proved that could take decades, if ever, for those chomping at the bit to bring the big predators back come hell or high water. The second op- tion was to artifi cially speed the process by transporting captured wolves from Canadian packs. Two types of releases also were considered. One was called a “soft release,” the second “hard release.” The soft release program brought
captured wolves into Yellowstone and kept in fenced one-acre cages, fed road kill, medically treated for any ailments, and radio collared before release after giving them time to acclimate them- selves to that area. Fourteen wolves were released to great public fanfare in March of 1995. By 1996, a total of 66 wolves had been released in both the park and Idaho high country. The hard release wolves were
turned loose directly into wild areas without acclimating. After 15 wolves were turned loose in the central portion of Idaho near the Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming saw the writing on the wall that the reintroduction decision would go ahead even though they did not support it.
All three states began setting up
seasons, limits, and licenses to hunt wolves once they were delisted. That trigger to legally hunt wolves was de- cided to be when there were 30 breed- ing pairs residing in each state for three consecutive years under the auspices of the USFWS as defi ned by the ESA. By the end of 2004, the wolf population in the tri-state region already had erupted to 835 wolves and 66 breeding packs, an accelerated growth rate surprising all previous predictions and triggering even graver concerns by big-game de- partments in the surrounding states and their license-buying sportsmen. In January 2007, the USFWS an-
nounced its decision to fi nally delist wolves and allow their hunting in the three Rocky Mountain states. Most interestingly, they also reported that the breeding pairs/overall population numbers had been exceeded every year since 2002, when hunts could have be- gun. While the service approved wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana, pursuant to EPA rules, they did not for Wyoming which demanded, and still demands to- day, broader control over the wolf take in their state. In April 2008, Defenders of Wildlife and their allies listed earlier fi led suit in federal court to stop the delisting, thus the hunts. In July 2008, federal judge Donald Molloy, U.S. District Court in Missoula, Montana, granted a preliminary injunction against the hunts, placing the wolf pack under federal protection. This endless litany of dangerous judicial Ping Pong, del- isting then challenging that decision, is the game Defenders and their ilk have continually played to delay or stop the hunts from that day to this and, unfor- tunately, with some measure of success. Defenders likes to represent themselves in court as being wildlife experts but they are nothing of the kind. Their major goal is to stop hunting anyplace they can, for any reason they can, on any premise they can cook up. Finally, in September 2009, Judge
Molloy again allowed the first legal hunting of wolves in Idaho and Mon- tana but not Wyoming. Idaho’s hunt for
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