Wildlife and People

Northern Rocky Mountain Wolves Delisted, Again

It has been a rocky road for the Rocky Mountain wolves. Today the “Distinct Population Segment” (DPS) of Northern Rocky Mountain (NRM) wolves was removed (again) from the Endangered Species list, with the exception of Wyoming wolves.

The NRM Wolf Delisting Rule was filed in the National Register this morning, April 2, 2009. The rule becomes effective May 04, 2009 (unless there is a lawsuit, and that has been virtually guaranteed [here]).

The Fed Register statement is [here]. It is 56 pages long (pp 15123 to 15188). The USFWS had a lot to say about this delisting. We are still studying the statement (we find it interesting, which says something about us as well as the USFWS). Be that as it may, the nitty gritty reads:

In conclusion, based on the best scientific and commercial data available, we recognize a DPS of the gray wolf (C. lupus) in the NRM. The NRM gray wolf DPS encompasses the eastern one-third of Washington and Oregon, a small part of north-central Utah, and all of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Recent estimates indicate the NRM DPS contains approximately 5 times more wolves than the minimum population recovery goal requires and about 3 times more wolves than the breeding pair recovery goal requires. The end of 2008 will mark the ninth consecutive year the population has exceeded our numeric and distributional recovery goals.

The States of Montana and Idaho have adopted State laws, management plans, and regulations that meet the requirements of the Act and will conserve a recovered wolf population into the foreseeable future. However, wolf populations in Wyoming continue to face high magnitude of threats that would materialize imminently in the absence of the Act’s protections because of a lack of effective regulatory mechanisms in the State.

We determine that the best scientific and commercial data available demonstrates that

(1) the NRM DPS is not threatened or endangered throughout “all” of its range (i.e., not threatened or endangered throughout all of the DPS); and

(2) the Wyoming portion of the range represents a significant portion of range where the species remains in danger of extinction because of inadequate regulatory mechanisms. Thus, this final rule removes the Act’s protections throughout the NRM DPS except for Wyoming.

Wolves in Wyoming will continue to be regulated as a nonessential, experimental population per 50 CFR 17.84 (i) and (n).

Our emphasis. We will have more to say about all this after we finish reading and digesting the 55-page statement. Your comments and analysis are invited, as usual.