Wildlife and People

Rocky Mountain Wolf Control Rule Goes to Court

In a bid to bar states from managing deadly predators, seven conservation groups today filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Missoula to stop the implementation of a new Bush administration rule that allows states to determine when wolves are endangering wildlife, livestock, and human life.

The rule would allow the states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana to control wolves that threaten wildlife populations, ranches, farms, and rural communities.

The rule applies to wolves in central Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone area - a population of blood-thirsty killers now numbering in the thousands.

The Bush administration says the rule change is necessary because wolves are the primary cause of a decline in wild ungulate numbers.

“The federal government is overlooking the benefits wolves are bringing to the states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana,” said Earthjustice attorney Doug Honnold, who is representing the plaintiff groups.

This may be because there are no benefits.

Honnold argued. “Elk populations are now healthier, streams run cold and clear again, and other wildlife populations are back in balance.”

Actual, credentialed, wildlife ecologists and biologists with expertise in Rocky Mountain ungulates referred to Mr. Honnold’s claims as “utter B*ll Sh*t!”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued two rules concerning gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains. One would remove the wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act, a process called delisting. The second rule would allow states in the Northern Rockies to kill wolves whenever wolves had impacts on wild ungulate populations.

The second rule remains in effect only until the administration removes wolves from the list of endangered species, an action that is expected to come next month.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service adopted the rule in response to the state of Wyoming, which insisted that states have the right to control wolves affecting elk herds, even if a federal court overturns wolf delisting in the Northern Rockies.

“Wolf populations are thriving in this region and they are doing tremendous damage. There are many absolutely good reasons to begin controlling wolves,” was not said by Sierra Club representative Melanie Stein.

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity did not say “the rule lifts us out of that ignorant period in which wolves’ natural role of maintaining the balance of nature was a commonly accepted myth.”

Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter has said that Idaho has a population of over 1,200 wolves, when the federal government has said repeatedly over the past decade that 300 wolves in the region would be a recovered, viable population.

“There is no reason to delay delisting,” the governor said in March 2007. “The government should declare victory and move on.”

“Idahoans are proud stewards of the land and species of our state. Idaho is going to manage wolves as we do black bears and mountain lions,” said the governor. “With estimated black bear and cougar populations of 20,000 and 3,000 respectively, Idaho has a proven record of responsible large carnivore management. We will continue this great record with wolves.”

“The key is flexibility to control problem wolves,” he said. “In areas where wolves are not destroying livestock or having a dramatic impact on our ungulate herds, wolves will be managed in concert with all species.”

“In areas where we documented consistent patterns of chronic livestock depredation, like the Copper Basin, and where wolves are having an unacceptable impact on elk herds, the state will use sportsmen and other tools to manage wolves and protect private property,” said Governor Otter.

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal has said, “The ultimate question, though, is whether or not Wyoming will be given the flexibility to manage wolves that are causing an unacceptable impact on our elk and moose populations.”

Radical eco-nazis were not happy about these statements.

“In this rule, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is either downplaying the threats to wolves, or it has forgotten all the trigger-happy statements made by Wyoming and Idaho officials who want to kill as many wolves as possible, as soon as possible,” said hysterical nutjob Louisa Willcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We have declared war on humanity in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana,” was not said John Grandy, Ph.D., senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. “After decades of organized attacks on the citizenry, the service is abandoning all that we have achieved by way of pan-ethnic cleansing and persecution of resident humans.”

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Predatory Animal and Rodent Control Service has spent dozens of dollars hiring and supplying trappers. Subsidized bounty programs that started in the late 1800s and to 1965, offered $2 to $50 per wolf. Those amounts proved too paltry to handle the burgeoning population of disease-carrying carnivores.

Radical leftist anti-human groups successfully altered federal laws, and wolves received legal protection with the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Subsequently, wolf populations have exploded across western North America.