The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has issued a proposed rule that would transition control of wolf management within wolf reintroduction areas to certain western states. States such as Montana and Idaho would assume, for the first time ever, the wolf management role normally held by the USFWS, one of two federal agencies responsible for implementation and enforcement of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

If the proposed rule becomes final, it will change the way the ESA is applied to "nonessential experimental" wolf populations. In essence, the proposed rule will broaden the circumstances under which private citizens and government personnel may kill wolves on private and public lands within the wolf reintroduction areas of western states that have approved wolf management plans.

Under current regulations, wolves within the nonessential experimental population areas of these states—on both public and private lands—can be killed when they attack livestock or in defense of human life. The proposed rule would additionally allow private citizens or government employees to kill wolves who are deemed to be "routinely present" on that land and who appear to pose a threat to livestock, whether or not those wolves have attacked any livestock.

States would also be allowed, with minimal supervision by the USFWS, to kill wolves in a simplistic and ecologically naïve attempt to boost populations of popular game animals, such as deer and elk. Hunters often clamor for this increase in game animals just so they can kill the deer or elk themselves, instead of the wolves, whom the hunters unjustifiably blame for the decline in the first place.

How You Can Help

The USFWS is accepting public comments on the proposed rule until Monday, May 10, 2004. Please write to the USFWS and tell the agency that management of nonessential experimental wolves in Montana and Idaho is already flexible enough. For a detailed breakdown of the differences between current regulations and the proposed rule, please see the next page.

Send your comments to:

USFWS
Western Gray Wolf Recovery Coordinator
100 North Park
No. 320
Helena, MT 59601
Fax: 406-449-5339

Or e-mail them to: westerngraywolf@fws.gov.

If you send your comments by e-mail, you must submit them as an ASCII file and avoid the use of special characters or any form of encryption. In your letter or e-mail, please reference "RIN 1018-AT61" and include your name and return address or e-mail address.

Proceed to page 2 for more details on the USFWS proposal. Breakdown of Proposed Changes

'Nonessential Experimental': What It All Means

Under the ESA, the Secretary of the Interior may designate a population of an ESA-listed endangered species as "experimental" if the population is reintroduced outside the current range of the species, but within its probable historic range. An experimental population can additionally be classified as "nonessential" if it is not considered essential to the continued existence of the species. Except where it occurs on certain federal lands, a nonessential experimental population is managed as a species that has been proposed for listing under the ESA, rather than one that has already been listed as either threatened or endangered.

In other words, the nonessential experimental designation already allows a great deal of flexibility in managing wolves.

"Flexibility" = "More Killing Opportunities"

Despite the current management flexibility of nonessential experimental populations, the USFWS wants even more. For wolves, this greater "flexibility" means more opportunities for private citizens or government employees to kill them. The following is a breakdown of many of the differences between current regulations and proposed regulations:

• Harassment
  
  

  Current: Within the nonessential experimental population boundaries, a landowner can non-lethally harass—but not intentionally injure—wolves at any time on his/her property, as can a livestock producer on a public land grazing allotment.

  Proposed: In addition to the harassment currently allowed, permits would be available from either the USFWS or the state, allowing landowners or livestock producers to potentially injure wolves via more aggressive harassment tactics whenever "persistent wolf activity" has been confirmed on private land or on a public land grazing allotment.

• Killing Wolves on Private Lands

  Current: A livestock producer can kill a wolf on his/her property, but only if the wolf is in the act of attacking livestock. Landowners cannot legally kill a wolf who is attacking other domestic animals, such as hunting dogs roaming unsupervised in wolf habitat.

  Proposed: Any landowner—not just livestock producers—would be allowed to kill a wolf on private lands when the wolf is in the act of attacking domestic animals, including livestock, as well as pets and hunting dogs. In addition, a landowner may receive a permit, valid for up to one year, allowing him/her to kill a wolf if, at least one time during the year, wolves have attacked domestic animals on or adjacent to that property.

  More worrisome is a provision allowing a one-year permit for a landowner to kill wolves who are considered to be "routinely present" on the property and who are thought to "present a significant risk to the health and safety" of livestock, livestock-guarding animals, and other domestic animals. In other words, it is quite possible that under this subjectively worded provision, routine sightings of wolves would be sufficient to allow a landowner to kill a wolf who has done nothing wrong.

• Killing Wolves on Public Lands

  Current: Livestock producers who are grazing their animals legally on public land grazing allotments can obtain permits from the USFWS, valid for up to 45 days, to injure or kill a wolf who is in the act of attacking livestock.

  Proposed: A livestock producer who is legally grazing their animals on public land could obtain a permit, valid for up to one year, from either the USFWS or the state to kill a wolf if wolves have been responsible for recent depredations on any domestic animals on or near the grazing allotment. As on private lands, an additional provision would allow for such permits even when wolves have simply been "routinely present" and are subjectively classified as a risk to domestic animals.

• Management of Wolves to Boost Ungulate Populations

  Current: Currently, if state or tribal agencies can demonstrate that wolves are impacting ungulate populations (i.e. popular game species such as deer or elk) or threatened or endangered species, wolves may be captured and translocated.

  Proposed: The proposed rule would give approved state agencies the authority to kill wolves in ill-conceived and ecologically unsound attempts to boost wild ungulate (deer and elk) populations if the state deems that wolves are having an "unacceptable impact" on ungulate populations. In other words, wolves could be killed simply for fulfilling their important role as a long-absent top carnivore.

Rule Exclusions

This rule would apply only to those states where the USFWS has approved a wolf management plan. Nonessential experimental wolves existing in Wyoming (a portion of the Yellowstone Experimental Population Area) are not currently affected by this rule because the USFWS is not satisfied that Wyoming's wolf management plan will be sufficient to maintain a viable wolf population.

States with current, recognized wolf populations, including Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming in the Northern Rockies region, have developed wolf management plans that will guide wolf management in those states once wolves are no longer protected by the ESA. Though the USFWS was wise to reject Wyoming's wolf management plan, the plans of Montana and Idaho—which the USFWS has approved—would also allow many opportunities for wolves to be killed via sport hunting, trapping, and liberal lethal control for livestock protection. In fact, Idaho has already classified the gray wolf as a game animal, suggesting that the state intends to allow sport hunters to take aim at wolves as soon as the animal is federally delisted and all protections under the ESA are removed.

The nonessential experimental Mexican gray wolf population, which is in portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, is not affected by this proposed rule.

Wolves as Scapegoats

Clearly, the nonessential experimental designation for wolf populations in Idaho and Montana (and Wyoming) already allows livestock producers with sufficient means, including lethal control, to protect their animals from wolf depredations. Increasing opportunities for private citizens to kill wolves will result in unnecessary and inhumane killings of these natural predators.

Furthermore, by allowing the sport hunting or other lethal removal of wolves as a way to increase deer and elk hunting opportunities, the USFWS is buying into the simplistic notion that, if a predator is killing a prey animal, then reducing the number of predators should increase the number of prey animals. This assumption ignores scientific findings that have repeatedly shown that prey animals rarely decline as a result of native predators, and tend to be more limited by food availability.

Declines in ungulate and other prey populations are nearly always due to exotic diseases or to habitat loss, fragmentation, or degradation, not predation. Regardless of the impact of a predator on a particular prey population, there is little evidence to suggest that reducing the number of predators will actually increase the number of prey animals.

Delisting Looms on the Horizon

The USFWS has already reclassified the gray wolf in most of the lower 48 states from endangered to threatened, and has announced its intentions to delist the gray wolf in the west, removing all federal protections under the ESA for these animals. Such a move will be premature, both because wolf populations in the west remain small and scattered, and because many people and special interest groups continue to hold extremely negative attitudes toward the wolf. These attitudes, and the wolf mortality that inevitably results, will continue to pose a threat to the recovery of the gray wolf nationwide.

Read the USFWS's proposed rule, which was published in the Federal Register on March 9, 2004.