A branch of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture has given itself the OK to continue
lethal wolf control in Wyoming, but some environmental groups are
objecting to how the agency went about approving its plan.
The Wildlife Services program, part of the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, completed an environmental planning document last fall that favored its current lethal and nonlethal wolf conflict management program.
The Wildlife Services program, part of the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, completed an environmental planning document last fall that favored its current lethal and nonlethal wolf conflict management program.
The
public and even federal land managers such as the Bridger-Teton
National Forest were left in the dark as the agency went through its
planning process, according to a letter submitted by the Greater
Yellowstone Coalition.
“Wildlife
Services did not carry out a public scoping process for this
[environmental assessment],” Chris Colligan, the coalition’s wildlife
program coordinator, wrote in a letter dated Nov. 25. “Further, they did
not adequately consult and coordinate with other public land management
agencies.”
While
in talks with the Bridger-Teton on a separate issue Colligan learned
the Bridger-Teton was not notified of Wildlife Service’s action, he
wrote.
“Ironically,”
Colligan wrote, “the 3.4 million acres of Bridger-Teton National Forest
lands in Wyoming are home to roughly half of the wolf packs outside of
Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and the Bridger-Teton National
Forest as the permitting agency manages public land grazing allotments,
which are the source of most of the conflicts with wolves.”
Mike
Foster, Wildlife Service’s Wyoming director, said the environmental
assessment was posted online and a notice was published in the paper of
record, the Casper Star-Tribune.
The
agency assembled the National Environmental Policy Act planning
document so that staffers would no longer have to annually prepare plans
to approve their wolf control activities, Foster said.
“We’ve
never had an EA for wolves in Wyoming,” Foster said. “We’ve been
working under categorical exclusions up until this point, and by
completing this EA that allows us to do our job in a more efficient
manner.”
Compared
with the current wolf conflict management, Wildlife Services’ preferred
plan proposes “very little” change, Foster said.
“We seem to have found that what we’re doing is working,” he said.
In
Wyoming, Wildlife Services uses a “full range of legal, practical and
effective nonlethal and lethal” methods for preventing and reducing wolf
conflict, the agency’s environmental assessment says.
When
wolves cause problems with livestock and the decision is made to kill
them, it’s almost always Wildlife Services that gets the call to carry
out the task, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northern Rocky
Mountain wolf coordinator Mike Jimenez.
In the Equality State in 2014, for example, 37 wolves were killed for having preyed on 56 head of cattle and six sheep.
Numbers
for 2015 aren’t yet finalized, but Jimenez said wolves killed 56 cattle
and 59 sheep last year. In retaliation federal managers took down 55
wolves, the highest number since 2007.
Wildlife
Services has a limited role in nonlethal wolf conflict management and
isn’t budgeted money to assist in those preventive techniques, Foster
said. Using guard dogs, hiring range riders and erecting flagged
electrified fences are examples of ways stockmen can reduce
wolf-livestock conflict.
“Most of the nonlethal actions take place by the ranchers themselves before Wildlife Services gets involved,” Foster said.
The
majority of the 14 comments submitted to Wildlife Services were sent by
environmental advocacy groups and listed concerns about the planning
document.
The Wyoming Stock Growers Association and Sublette County sheep ranchers Jim and Cat Urbigkit wrote comments in support.
The
Natural Resources Defense Council is one group that called for Wildlife
Services to consider making nonlethal wolf control a priority while
still permitting some lethal action.
Wildlife
Services hopes to issue a final decision on its Wyoming wolf conflict
management plan “by the end of January,” Foster said.
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