Gray wolves in Idaho are no longer protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a rule in the Federal Register today, removing protections for wolves in Idaho, Montana and parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah. The agency also published another rule that will lead to delisting of wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Federal and state officials hailed the move as a victory for the ESA, which is charged with protecting imperiled species.
"Like other iconic species such as the whooping crane, the brown pelican and the bald eagle, the recovery of the gray wolf is another success story for the Endangered Species Act," Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar said.
Environmental groups, however, said the delisting, particularly in the Northern Rocky Mountain states where it was ordered by Congress, is misguided.
"It has undermined our nation's commitment to good stewardship and sets a terrible precedent for side-stepping America's bedrock environmental laws whenever it's politically convenient to do so," said Roger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.
Virgil Moore, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Boise, said he would move swiftly to implement the state's plan to kill about 50 wolves in the Lolo Zone, where elk herds are struggling. That plan includes aerial gunning of wolves that could begin this spring.
A wolf hunting season will be conducted this fall, although Moore said he doesn't know yet how many wolves Idaho will ultimately manage. The delisting rule calls for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take over wolf management if numbers in Idaho ever fall below 100, and to consider relisting if populations dip below 150. There are estimated to be at least 700 wolves in Idaho today. Moore said the state will aim for a population that includes enough of a buffer that normal population dips don't lead to relisting under the ESA. However, he made it clear the state would not look to carry a large surplus of the animals and would instead try to hover right at or above what biologists consider a safe distance from the 150-animal floor.
"I'm going to be tasking the staff to answer how big a buffer do we need," he said.
Wolves were reintroduced in central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996. Their numbers quickly grew and by 2002 they started to meet predetermined delisting criteria. Despite their remarkable biological success, removing federal protections from wolves has proven difficult. Today marks the third time in three years wolves have been removed from the list of threatened and endangered species.
In 2008 and 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy overturned delisting rules. In the first instance, Molloy said there wasn't enough interbreeding between wolves in different populations in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. He also didn't like a Wyoming law that allowed wolves to be shot on sight in most of the state.
Last year, after the federal government stripped Wyoming out of the delisting process, Molloy said it was illegal for it to remove protections based on political, instead of biological, boundaries.
With wolf numbers in the region at about 1,600 and well above delisting thresholds called for in the reintroduction plan, hunters, ranchers and political leaders became increasingly agitated at the inability of states to reduce wolf populations. Last month, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., attached language to a must-pass spending bill that called for the delisting rule to be reissued. It passed and was signed into law.
Idaho will continue to send wolf population reports to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the next five years and will receive some federal funding during that time. The Nez Perce Tribe will also continue to monitor wolf populations in the Clearwater and McCall regions.
