BILLINGS, Mont. – Federal lawmakers pressed
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell last week to drop the administration’s
plan to end federal protections for gray wolves across most of the Lower
48 states.
Seventy-four House members signed onto a
Wednesday letter to Jewell that cited a peer-review panel’s recent
conclusion the government relied on unsettled science to make its case
that the wolves have sufficiently recovered.
Gray wolves were added to the endangered-species
list in 1975 after being widely exterminated in the last century.
Protections already were lifted for rebounding populations of the
predators in the northern Rockies and Great Lakes regions.
Hunting in those regions now kills hundreds of
gray wolves annually, though state officials insist the species’
population remains healthy.
But lawmakers led by Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio,
the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, contend
protections elsewhere should remain. That’s in part because gray wolves
have not yet repopulated areas where researchers identified suitable
habitat for the animals in California, Utah, Colorado and the Northeast.
The lawmakers wrote that taking the animals off
the endangered species list and putting them under state management
would “stifle gray wolf recovery” and undermine decades of restoration
efforts.
Among those signing the letter were two House Republicans – Chris Smith of New Jersey and Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
A panel of independent scientists last month
rejected the government’s claim that the Northeast and Midwest were home
to a separate species, the eastern wolf. The government claim would
make it unnecessary to restore gray wolves in those areas, but the
peer-review panel said there was too little science to support such a
view.
In their letter to Jewell, the lawmakers
criticized Interior for resurrecting a dormant government journal to
publish a study from its own employees that justified the findings about
the eastern wolf.
A public-comment period on Interior’s proposal
ends March 27. The agency has said it expects to make a final decision
by the end of the year.
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