Four weeks from now, January 12, marks the official 10-year anniversary for the return of the gray wolf to Yellowstone National Park. While the resurgence of a wolf population in the lower 48 states is an historic wildlife conservation success, Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen warned this week that the reintroduction campaign will be in jeopardy if the Bush administration has its way.
In a speech this week in Washington, DC, Schlickeisen described the many benefits of the campaign: not only the return of the gray wolf, but also ecological benefits, such as balancing the elk population and a consequent boom in willow and cottonwood tree growth. None of this would have been possible without the protections now being threatened by the Bush administration's Department of Interior.
The wolves have already been reclassified from endangered to threatened on the national level, which in some cases has entirely removed protections. The Bush administration is also pushing for still weaker federal management of the wolves, via a shift to the state level. Defenders has filed a lawsuit against reclassification on the grounds that the wolf population has not fully recovered, and that the rule precludes recovery in additional habitat suitable for wolves. [1]
In what Defenders calls an unscientific approach to wolf management, distinct regions are being designated in the U.S. without appropriate consideration being given to population goals for each region. For example, in the Northwest, population goals have been set for three states -- Idaho, Montana and Wyoming -- and six states are to be added to this new group without adjusting population goals for that region. In the Northeast, one recovery zone was created for the removal of protections even though no recovery efforts had been made in certain subsets of the Northeast recovery zone.
As Schlickeisen told BushGreenwatch, "Wolves have made great progress in the last decade. Sadly, the Bush administration is rapidly becoming the wolf’s most dangerous predator. Its efforts to remove protections for the wolf, coupled with its unscientific approach to wolf management, pose the greatest threat today to the continued recovery of the wolf in this country."
Wolf protections are also being attacked on a second front. In the Bush administration's efforts to rewrite section 10J of the Endangered Species Act, control of the wolves would be turned over to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming before federal delisting, and federal protections would be weakened before recovery goals were met. [2]
Along with this policy move, state agencies would be allowed to kill wolves where there are declining elk populations, even if wolves are not proven to be the primary factor in the decline. People would also be allowed to kill wolves based only on personal beliefs that the wolves pose a threat to property. Defenders sees the Bush administration proposal as an opportunity for unnecessary killings and abuse of the rule. [3]
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SOURCES:
[1] Defenders of Wildlife speech, Dec. 14, 2004.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
