Back Off!

The wolves have done their part. So have the feds. The first animals, trapped in Canada, were carried into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Mollie Beattie. Yellowstone got 15 that year; central Idaho, 17. Just 12 years later there are more wolves in the northern Rockies than any wildlife advocate had hoped or any wolf hater had feared.

Before this “distinct population segment” in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana could shed its endangered status it would have to meet the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “recovery goal” of at least 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs in each of the three states. And the states would have to convince the service that their management plans would not let the population slip below this minimum. As of February 2007 the population estimate for the region—an accurate one because few, if any, large mammals are more closely monitored—was 1,294 wolves and 86 breeding pairs.

But at this writing delisting hasn’t happened, and even if it does, Rocky Mountain gray wolves face an uncertain future. Despite 12 years in which they’ve accounted for less than one percent of all livestock deaths and in which, in most areas, elk (their preferred prey) have proliferated past management objectives to the point that the states are trying to reduce their numbers, wolves are still widely reviled by outfitters, hunters, ranchers, and politicians.

It’s not difficult to keep the wolf population healthy, and it’s child’s play to convince the Fish and Wildlife Service you can do it. Montana’s plan, rightly described by the feds as a “class act,” was approved in 2004. Idaho’s plan—approved the same year after 16 rejected drafts—was, well, good enough, at least by federal standards. As a result, the service has ceded most wolf-management responsibility to these two states. When and if wolves are delisted, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming will get full management authority.

If the Endangered Species Act is to retain credibility and if limited funds are to save creatures truly in danger of extinction, it’s imperative that recovered species be delisted. But attitudes in Idaho threaten to undo recovery, and attitudes in Wyoming prevent delisting.

All Wyoming had to do to get federal permission for most wolf management was change the animal’s status from vermin (the official label is “predatory animal”) to “trophy game.” It refused. According to Wyoming law, wolves—once they’re delisted—can be dispatched at any time by any means for any reason virtually everywhere they occur save national parks. Game status—acceptable to the Fish and Wildlife Service—would have meant that Wyoming could shoot wolves almost to its heart’s content, provided it implemented a hunting season and bag limits.

“The Wyoming law treats wolves like coyotes,” says Ed Bangs, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s brilliant and embattled western gray wolf recovery coordinator. “That’s what caused wolves to disappear in the first place. Coyotes can thrive under those conditions, but wolves vanish. Predator status is fine with us for much of Wyoming because wolves probably won’t live there anyway. But you can’t have predator status in the good habitat right up to the national parks. The legislature developed this very detailed law, gave it to the fish and game guys, and said, okay, make it work. The biologists did their best—they really did—but they had to keep going back to the law. And that just ain’t gonna work for us.”

In January 2007 an impending “compromise” imploded after legislation that would have increased the area in which wolves could be exterminated as vermin was reported out of the Wyoming senate and house. The sponsor of one of the bills—Representative Pat Childers (R-Cody), chairman of the House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee—was quoted by the Casper Star Tribune as suggesting that the service place “some duct tape on Mr. Bangs’ mouth.” According to the Tribune, the service’s new regional director, Mitch King, “indicated he would do his best to silence Bangs.” Fortunately for the wolves, that’s not possible.

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal (a Democrat who apes for one of the nation’s most conservative electorates by, among other things, calling the Fish and Wildlife Service the “Fish and Wolf Service”) and Idaho’s Republican Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter (who calls for eradicating 500 of the state’s 673 wolves and says he wants to shoot the first one) never miss a chance to whip the public into a froth of fear and loathing.

The governors have had plenty of help. For instance, the Idaho Values Alliance quotes the Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife of Idaho as follows: “The wolf population is clearly threatening the livelihoods—and lives—of any number of Idaho families.” It then explains that wolf eradication is God’s will, citing as proof His instructions to the Israelites as reported in Leviticus 26:3, 6, 14, 22: “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands . . . I will remove savage beasts from the land. . . . But if you will not listen to me . . . and reject my decrees and abhor my laws . . . I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children [and] destroy your cattle.”