NEWS UPDATE: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Denies Threatened Status for Gray Wolf

By Rachel Tilseth, the founder of Wolves of Douglas County Wisconsin

on June 30, 2015

WODCW  was one of the 21 wolf conservation and wolf protection organizations to sign the petition for threatened status that the USF&WS rejected today. Threatened status would provide solutions to depredation concerns for the state’s farmers and ranchers. Under threatened status a trophy hunt of wolves would not be allowed.

WODCW believes the state of WI has mismanaged wolves that were delisted in 2012 by holding a recreational trophy hunt on wolves. The recreational trophy hunt employed the barbaric method of using hound hunting dogs to track and trail wolves and also, the inhumane method of trapping.

WODCW believes wolves must stay in federal protected status, under the Endangered Species Act until the state of WI can show reasonable wolf management that protects the health and welfare of wild wolves. Wolves are crucial for our ecosystems.

The fight’s not over yet. WODCW will keep you up to date.
~Rachel

The following is from HSUS press release on today’s disappointing decision. 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Denies Threatened Status for Gray Wolf, Rejecting Reasonable Compromise on Contentious Issue

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected a petition that would reclassify most gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act as “threatened” throughout the contiguous United States. The proposal, which was filed by The Humane Society of the United States and 21 other conservation and wolf protection organizations in January 2015, offered a pathway for a reasonable compromise between the current more restrictive “endangered” listing for wolves in the Great Lakes and Wyoming, and the efforts by some anti-wolf politicians in Congress to strip wolves of all protections entirely. A “threatened” listing would have continued federal oversight and funding of wolf recovery efforts, but also would have given federal, state and local wildlife managers more flexibility to address specific wolf conflicts such as livestock depredation. Michael Markarian, chief program and policy officer of The Humane Society of the United States issued the following statement:

“We are disappointed in the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision not to consider this middle-ground approach to wolf management. A threatened listing is a reasonable compromise to this contentious issue, and it retains some federal protection for wolves, while providing more flexibility to the states in dealing with the occasional problem wolf. We need practical solutions, not to turn back the clock to the days of widespread hound hunting, baiting and trapping of hundreds of wolves in states with hostile and reckless wolf management policies.” http://m.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2015/06/fws-denies-wolf-petition-063015.html

photograph used with permission of artist Ron Niebrugge

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