Posted: 06/07/2013
But the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) announced today that they feel their work to protect gray wolves in the United States is done (not including Mexican or red wolves). Done?
While FWS deserves serious credit for the incredible efforts it made to bring the wolf back, it is now jeopardizing its own accomplishment. The comeback of the wolf in the Northern Rockies and the Great Lakes is undoubtedly one of the greatest success stories of the Endangered Species Act, but it is way to early to call it quits.
Wolf populations around the country are still recovering. Obviously, we don't expect to see wolves everywhere they once roamed. However, if protected, we know that wolves have the potential to return to key states like California, Colorado, Utah, Maine, and New York--all of which have suitable wolf habitat.
How do we know? Take OR-7, otherwise known as Journey; he is an incredible wolf. He has traveled alone more than 1,000 miles, leaving behind his family in Oregon to explore California. In doing so, he made history, becoming the only wild wolf known to be in California in the past few decades. Meanwhile, another 81-pound wolf very recently found his way down to Missouri. (He was unfortunately shot by a hunter mistaking him for a coyote).
Wolves don't recognize state boundaries. They will find their way to new suitable habitats. But, unless they're protected, individual wolves are not going to start families in a new state. In most states, they'll be killed well before they find a mate and start a litter of pups.
We are already seeing what happens when wolves in a particular state lose federal protections. With wolves pulled from the endangered species list nationally, it will be up to the states on how they want to "manage" wolves. When we take a look at the few states where wolves have already been delisted, it isn't looking good.
Often-conflicted state officials, pressured by anti-wolf extremists and other special interests, are increasingly allowing aggressive management policies. Wyoming is opening up more land to shoot-on-sight, limitless killing. Idaho has hired an outside agency to reduce its packs in a misguided attempt to inflate elk numbers. Montana's proposed buffer zone to protect wolves around Yellowstone National Park has been blocked by the Montana legislature. Minnesota allowed the trapping or shooting of more than 400 wolves in the first year. And Wisconsin allowed the killing of more than one hundred wolves, mostly by trapping--an incredibly inhumane form of taking wolves. (We'll spare you the pictures, but trust us, wolves shouldn't have to endure such cruelty.)
We
know wolves are seeking out new territories. We know that states are
under pressure to be more aggressive to kill wolves. Given these trends,
removing protections from the remainder of the country's wolves hardly
seems like a sound, science-based conservation.We've made such great progress. Why turn the clock back on this incredible success story of the Endangered Species Act? This is a disappointing beginning to Secretary Jewell's term at the Department of Interior. But it doesn't have to be. FWS's announcement is a proposed delisting of wolves. It isn't final yet.
We all need to make our voices heard and request the continued protection of wolves. We've got 90 days to comment. Go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov. In the Search box, enter FWS-HQ-ES-2013-0073, which is the docket number for this rule making. And make your comments known.
We will fight to stop this proposal at every step. You can learn more about our work to protect wolves and other endangered wildlife here.
Thank you for standing up and speaking out for wildlife and wild places.
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America's Wolves Don't Deserve This
Posted: 06/07/2013
On Friday morning, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced its plans to strip Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across most of the lower 48 states.
This decision, if enacted, prematurely ends one of the most important wildlife recovery stories in America's history.
Wolves today occupy just 5 percent of their historic habitat in the continental United States. Apparently that 5 percent is enough for the Obama administration to declare victory and walk away.
Many of the nation's top wolf scientists disagree. They have criticized the wildlife agency for misrepresenting their research and failing to rely on the best scientific evidence on wolf recovery.
This proposal severely limits any chance wolves will ever return to hundreds of square miles of prime wolf habitat in places like the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, California, the southern Rocky Mountains or the Northeast. These are places far from people and with plentiful prey to support them - places where healthy populations of wolves can survive and thrive.
Decades ago the federal government made a commitment to save and recover wolves, recognizing the ecological importance of these top predators. We also recognized that we have a moral obligation to help these animals that, for decades, were the victim of ruthless government programs to drive them off the landscape.
Prematurely stripping federal protections for wolves across most of the lower 48 will certainly raise the risk that they'll be increasingly shot and trapped.
In the northern Rocky Mountains, more than 1,100 wolves have been killed since protections were removed in 2011 and this year populations declined by 7 percent.
There's no reason to expect this type of killing won't continue once nearly all wolves in the continental United States lose their protections.
And by letting that happen, we'll be foreclosing on the possibility that wolves can, at some point, return to many of their ancestral lands in mountains, forest, valleys and plains. Left alone to do their job, wolves sustain a critical natural balance in those places, whether it's keeping deer and coyote populations in check or keeping elk and other prey species on the move so they don't devour and trample streamsides that songbirds and beavers need to survive.
Wolves deserve a chance to return to the American landscape. They will never be as abundant as they once were across North America, and nobody expects that. But restoring them to just 5 percent of where they once lived, then calling it quits and hunting them down again by the thousands? That's just wrong.
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