Colo.
rancher decries ruling on wolf status
By
DAVE BUCHANAN
The Daily Sentinel
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Tuesday’s federal court ruling
that scrapped a Bush administration move to downlist gray wolves from
endangered to threatened was a “stab in the back” to livestock
producers, said Bonny Kline, executive director of the Colorado Wool Growers
Association.
The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Jones
rescinded a 2003 federal policy that created three wolf recovery zones and
restored the wolf to endangered status over most of the nation.
The 2003 policy downgraded the wolf to threatened and
lifted the absolute protection they enjoyed as an endangered species, giving
ranchers and livestock producer more leeway to kill marauding wolves.
Now, only federal agencies can deal with problem wolves, a
situation Kline termed “a catastrophe.”
“I can’t imagine the ruling is going to stand
for the long term but in the short term to me it’s horrifying,” Kline
said. “Now we have no ability to protect our livestock. It’s really
devastating and the consequences are so far reaching.”
However, it shouldn’t destroy the year’s work
that went into a proposed wolf-management plan put together for the Colorado
Division of Wildlife, she said.
“We need to go ahead and adopt the plan,” Kline
emphasized. “It’s a good plan, even though it wouldn’t go into
effect until wolves are delisted. Still, we have to preserve that
work.”
As part of the lawsuit, several conservation groups
accused Interior Secretary Gale Norton of “gerrymandering” designated
wolf areas and said the ruling will prevent premature delisting of the wolf,
which remains extinct across much of its historic range.
“Instead of drawing lines on a map based on political
considerations, any future lines must be based on science,” said Michael
Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of 19 groups bringing the
suit.
But Kline, one of the two livestock producer
representatives on the 14-member Wolf Working Group, said the lawsuit likely
quashed what incentive the livestock industry might have had to continue
negotiations.
“Any good will or willingness to think outside the
box, to come up with unique solutions or work together has just plummeted to
zero right now,” said Kline. “There’s no reason for the
livestock industry to try to work with the wolf groups to come up with a
reasonable solution when (a lawsuit is) the mechanism they choose to do
business with.”
That doesn’t mean the state plan should be scrapped,
said Division of Wildlife director Bruce McCloskey.
“We have these groups working together, and
we’re going to presume we can carry on like we were,” McCloskey said
Wednesday. “We finally got these folks at the table talking about wolves
and they’re on the right track, I hope we can carry their work
forward.”
Ed Bangs, head of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s
northern Rockies wolf recovery program, said it’s too early to jump to
conclusions about the ruling.
“No one yet knows what it means. At its worst it may
turn us back to the way we managed wolves two years ago,” he said.
“We’ll have some of our best lawyers look at it and tell us what it
means. Until then, let’s all remain calm and when we have good information
we’ll be able to make a better informed decision,” Bangs said.
Colorado has no known wolves, although a female from a
Yellowstone pack wandered into the state late summer and was killed by a
vehicle on Interstate 70 near Idaho Springs.
Official estimates put the number of wolves in Wyoming,
Idaho and Montana at around 850. An estimated 3,200 wolves live in Michigan,
Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Dave Buchanan can be reached via e-mail at
dbuchanan@gjds.com.