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Feds Back to Drawing Board on Wolves: WILDLIFE:The U.S. Government Will Rework Its Plan to Take Wolves Off the Endangered Species List.

Posted on: Thursday, 22 December 2005, 15:00 CST

By John Myers, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn., Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.

Dec. 22--Federal wildlife managers must rework their plan to take wolves off the endangered species list now that the Bush administration has decided not to challenge court rulings against the plan.

The Interior Department confirmed Wednesday that it has withdrawn its appeals to court rulings in Oregon and Vermont that declared the federal wolf plan flawed.

That means federal wildlife officials must start from scratch on a new wolf plan -- and possibly several regional plans -- that will take months or years to finalize.

It also means wolves will remain under federal protections for the forseeable future in most of the U.S. But it could actually help speed up removing wolf protections in the Great Lakes region, where there is less debate over their status.

The administration had hoped its plan would reduce or remove protections across most of the U.S. by now. But, under the judges' rulings earlier this year, the government must be more specific in how it defines distinct wolf populations -- for example, separating thriving populations in the Great Lakes from the northeastern U.S., where wolves still haven't returned.

The rulings raise an interesting and probably controversial precedent -- that species must be recovered across a broader geographic region and not just be thriving in a few, smaller areas.

"This is great news, and it leaves hope for wolf populations in areas where they should be but haven't yet re-established," said John Kostyack, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation, a plaintiff in the Vermont case.

"The judge clearly agreed with the Endangered Species Act that says the species need to be recovered across a significant portion of their (original) range," he said.

Adrian Wydeven, wolf specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, agreed.

"We're glad it's going this way. Trying to battle it in court would have just taken more years," he said. "This way, the Great Lakes can be considered on its own. And if any area of the U.S. has enough wolves to be de-listed, it's here."

Ron Refsnider, lead wolf biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Minneapolis, said his office will immediately begin drafting a new plan to remove Great Lakes wolves from the endangered species list.

"The judges both seemed to agree that the Upper Midwest population is recovered but that we drew the lines too broad," Refsnider said. "I've already begun writing a plan that would move to de-list (Great Lakes) wolves."

A Great Lakes regional plan could be formally proposed in mid-2006, Refsnider said, and be final as early as 2007. That would mean control of wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan would move from the federal government to the states. That's good news to state wildlife managers, farmers and others who have argued for years that wolves no longer need federal protections and who already have waited a decade for the federal effort to play out.

Each of the Great Lake states already has a management plan in place anticipating the federal move. The plans would protect wolves in some areas but allow limited trapping and killing of wolves in agricultural areas.

Currently, only a few wolves can be killed by federal trappers near where livestock have been attacked. About 200 "problem" wolves are trapped and killed in Minnesota each year where wolves are officially listed as threatened. Only a few wolves have been killed in Wisconsin and Michigan, where wolves are still listed as endangered.

The animals were extinct in all of the lower 48 states except for Northeastern Minnesota in the 1970s, when the federal government stepped in to protect them. Since then, wolf numbers have grown in the northern Rockies and across the Great Lakes.

Minnesota now has about 3,000 wolves, with Wisconsin and Michigan each with about 450. That's more than double the amount first established for wolf recovery in the Great Lakes.

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Source: Duluth News-Tribune (Duluth, Minn.)

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