• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Subscribe
  • Donate

WyoFile

Indepth News about Wyoming People, Places & Policy. Wyoming news.

  • Latest News
    • Education
    • Energy
    • Legislature
    • Native America
    • Natural Resources
    • People
    • Photo Friday
    • Places
    • Policy
  • Voices
    • Drake’s Take
    • Madden’s Measure
    • Guest Column
    • Studio Wyoming Review
  • Supporters
    • Membership
    • Underwriting
    • Foundations
  • COVID-19
  • Latest News
    • Education
    • Energy
    • Legislature
    • Native America
    • Natural Resources
    • People
    • Photo Friday
    • Places
    • Policy
  • Voices
    • Drake’s Take
    • Madden’s Measure
    • Guest Column
    • Studio Wyoming Review
  • Supporters
    • Membership
    • Underwriting
    • Foundations
  • COVID-19

Judge spikes Wyo. wolf plan, reinstates federal protections

Judge spikes Wyo. wolf plan, reinstates federal protections

A battle is shaping up behind the scenes in Washington, D.C. to change elements of the Endangered Species Act, which was critical in bringing wolves back to Yellowstone National Park. The Gibbon wolf pack was photographed by park biologist Doug Smith who has spent 20 years studying the animals there. (Yellowstone National Park)

September 25, 2014 by Environment & Energy News 5 Comments

Tweet
Share
Pin
Email
0 Shares
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Published with permission from Environment & Energy (not for republication)

By Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Wyoming’s wolf hunt set to begin next week is in jeopardy after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., yesterday reinstated Endangered Species Act protections for the iconic predator.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found Wyoming provided no reasonable assurances that it would keep wolf numbers above a minimum threshold set by federal scientists when wolves were delisted in 2012. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s delisting rule was “arbitrary and capricious,” she said.

The ruling is a major blow for Wyoming as well as ranching and sportsmen’s groups that warn wolves prey on livestock and big game including elk and moose. For now, it is illegal to kill or harass a wolf anywhere in Wyoming.

Conservation groups cheered the ruling, having long argued that Wyoming’s wolf management plan was too aggressive because it allowed the predators to be killed without a license in about 85 percent of the state.

“We’re thrilled,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the lawsuit along with the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Defenders of Wildlife in November 2012, just months after wolves were returned to state control.

The Humane Society of the United States and Fund for Animals filed their own lawsuit months later, and the cases were combined.

“The court has ruled and Wyoming’s kill-on-sight approach to wolf management throughout much of the state must stop,” said Tim Preso, an attorney for Earthjustice in Bozeman, Mont., who represented the environmental groups. “If Wyoming wants to resume management of wolves, it must develop a legitimate conservation plan that ensures a vibrant wolf population in the Northern Rockies.”

Wyoming’s wolf hunt was scheduled to begin Oct. 1.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) said the state would ask for a stay of the ruling so it could craft an emergency rule to address Jackson’s concern.

“There are many positives in Judge Jackson’s decision,” Mead said in a statement. “However, she held that Wyoming’s plan was not sufficiently formalized to support the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2012 rule allowing limited take of gray wolves. We believe an emergency rule can remedy this.”

However, Jackson rejected environmentalists’ claims that wolves in and around Yellowstone National Park lack genetic connectivity with their northern Rocky Mountain kin and that they remain imperiled throughout a “significant portion” of their range.

Jackson said those issues were scientific matters on which the court would defer to FWS.

But the agency’s delisting rule in September 2012 was ultimately “arbitrary and capricious” because it was premised on flimsy assurances from Wyoming that wolves would be maintained above a minimum of 100 animals and 10 breeding pairs outside Yellowstone National Park.

“The reliance on mere assurances was inappropriate,” Jackson wrote in her 40-page opinion. “The agency expressly relied upon unenforceable statements of intent on an issue that was critical to the delisting decision.”

Since wolves were delisted in Wyoming, 219 of the animals have been killed, the environmental groups said. The state allowed 42 wolves to be killed as trophy in 2012, its first wolf hunt, and 24 last year, according to federal reports. More than 60 other wolves were killed in the predator zone encompassing most of Wyoming.

After being extirpated from the region in the 1930s, Rocky Mountain wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone in 1994. Federal biologists consider the species to have successfully recovered.

Wyoming currently has at least 306 wolves and 23 breeding pairs, according to the latest official estimate. About 1,691 roam Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington state, about level with the previous year.

Yesterday’s ruling is likely a disappointment for the National Rifle Association, Safari Club International and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which intervened in defense of the FWS delisting rule.

“Without the state’s wolf harvest and predator management strategies, long term wolf conservation in Wyoming is likely to fail,” the groups argued to the court in summer 2013. “The key to wolf sustainability in Wyoming … is social tolerance and the ability of state wildlife managers to achieve and maintain the cultural carrying capacity of wolves in the states.”

From 2008 to 2012, wolves in the northern Rockies killed an average of 199 cows and 397 sheep, according to federal data. That number is small compared with overall livestock losses in the region, FWS has said.

Yesterday’s ruling is the latest legal victory for environmental groups, which have long argued that wolves play an integral ecological role on the Western landscape and must be managed at higher numbers.

Environmental groups have succeeded twice in past lawsuits to block wolf delisting plans. In 2008, a federal district court in Montana tossed a FWS rule delisting the animals throughout the northern Rockies, arguing Wyoming’s plan was deficient. The same court rejected FWS’s plan 2009 to delist the animals in Montana and Idaho.

FWS Director Dan Ashe in 2012 argued that Wyoming wolves had met population recovery goals for 10 consecutive years. Wyoming’s wolf population is still double what is required under the FWS delisting plan.

But while FWS had rejected Wyoming’s earlier wolf management plan, its reversal in 2012 was based on “cosmetic” changes, the plaintiffs had argued.

FWS is now proposing to delist wolves throughout most of the rest of the lower 48 states, an effort that environmentalists are almost certain to challenge in court.

While wolves have made a swift comeback in the United States over the past two decades, wildlife advocates say they still need federal protection to recolonize suitable habitat in the southern Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, California and the Northeast.

 


Popular Articles:


Lawmakers defied mask orders at session kick-off in Capitol


Dire outlook for bees raises possibility of listing


Week 45: The pandemic in Wyoming from Jan. 16-22


Filed Under: Featured, Natural Resources, This Week

About Environment & Energy News

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lousewort rodgers says

    September 28, 2014 at 10:22 am

    I,d rather have a “cultural carrying capacity” and evolving ecology for the state of Wy. than the “Good Management Thinking” of elite funded special interest groups like the Tea Party or the Sierra Club.

      Reply
    • akwy says

      September 27, 2014 at 5:36 pm

      I’m sure Gov. Mead can come up with a valid and effective “emergency” rule acceptable to the court. The sad thing is that he, “Governor Dave” Freudenthal and the FWS chose to ignore good management thinking and to instead pander to the crowd that invented the bizarre concept of “cultural carrying capacity.” What a waste of time and emotion. Welcome to the 21st century, guys. — Bob LeResche

        Reply
      • akwy says

        September 27, 2014 at 6:36 pm

        I’m sure Gov. Mead can come up with a valid and effective “emergency” rule acceptable to the court. The sad thing is that he, “Governor Dave” Freudenthal and the FWS chose to ignore good management thinking and to instead pander to the crowd that invented the bizarre concept of “cultural carrying capacity.” What a waste of time and emotion. Welcome to the 21st century, guys. — Bob LeResche

          Reply
        • Lousewort rodgers says

          September 25, 2014 at 9:41 pm

          How much money was spent and by whom for the best ‘environgelic’ justice that money could buy ? seems to be missing from the story.

            Reply
          • Lousewort rodgers says

            September 25, 2014 at 10:41 pm

            How much money was spent and by whom for the best ‘environgelic’ justice that money could buy ? seems to be missing from the story.

              Reply

            Leave a Reply Cancel reply

            Want to join the discussion? Fantastic, here are the ground rules:
            - Identify yourself with full name and city. WyoFile stands behind everything we publish and expects commenters to do the same.
            - No personal attacks, profanity, discriminatory language or threats. Keep it clean, civil and on topic.

            Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

            Primary Sidebar

            • Email
            • Facebook
            • Instagram
            • Twitter

            Tweets by @WyoFile

            Search WyoFile

            Become an Underwriter
            Sign Up for Free Weekly Newsletters

            Recent Comments

            • John Warnock on A modest proposal for solving Wyoming’s budget woes
            • Andrea Morgan on 400 seconds of tolling for 400,000 dead
            • bruce vojtecky on Adverse solar bill advances after heated subsidies debate
            • Lynn Carlson on A modest proposal for solving Wyoming’s budget woes
            • Robert Nickens on The unsupportable cost of Wyoming’s tax giveaways

            Footer

            Recent Posts By Date

            January 2021
            M T W T F S S
             123
            45678910
            11121314151617
            18192021222324
            25262728293031
            « Dec    

            From The Archives

            • About Us
            • People
            • Careers
            • Freelancing
            • Underwriting
            • How to Republish
            • Subscribe
            • Contact Us

            Copyright © 2021 by WyoFile