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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Bringing the wolves back to the Rockies has been a huge success story. So why are we allowed to gun them down?
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Read more: Environment, Politics, News, Animals, Katharine Mieszkowski, Environment & Science
AP Photo/Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks
A gray wolf pup from the Calder Mountain pack along the Montana-Idaho border west of Troy, Mont.
May 27, 2008 | In Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley, the return of gray wolves has turned the wild canines into celebrities. At dusk, scope-toting wildlife watchers and photographers stake out the valley to observe the crepuscular predators. One of the most popular wolves in the valley, known to wildlife biologists as 253M, won the affectionate nickname Limpy, because of a pronounced limp from an injury.
Born to the Druid Peak pack, Limpy was wounded in a fierce fight with a neighboring pack, the Nez Perce, before he was a year old. After the injury, he could hardly use his back left leg for the rest of his life. "This is a wolf that could easily have just died, but he fought back, and he was able to still hunt," says Brian Connolly, a children's book author, who spends four months a year in Yellowstone wolf watching.
In 2002, Limpy's renown grew when he wandered to Utah and got caught in a coyote trap. It was the first confirmed wolf sighting in that state in 70 years. Shipped back to Wyoming in the back of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife truck, Limpy became the beta male of his pack. His dark coat made it easy for wildlife watchers and awestruck tourists to pick him out as he roamed the valley, hunting elk, tending pups and defending the pack's den from bears, all despite his bum leg.
To wildlife biologists and conservationists, Limpy embodies the success of the $30 million federal project to reintroduce the charismatic predator into the northern Rockies. Today, after an exhausting political battle that has lasted decades, 1,500 wolves thrive in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. But there's a flip side to the victory.
This year, on Feb. 27, given the reintroduction's success, the Bush administration removed the gray wolves of the northern Rockies from the federal Endangered Species List. It's now legal to shoot a wolf in more than 85 percent of the state of Wyoming, even if the wolf being shot has no history of preying on livestock or domestic animals.
On March 28, the day that new state wolf policies went into effect, a hunter stationed near elk feeding grounds in Daniel, Wyo., shot and killed Limpy. In the parlance of wolf management, Limpy was a "clean" wolf who'd never been known to prey on livestock or domestic animals.
Limpy is not the only victim. In the past two months, wolf-hunting parties in Wyoming have been gathering near elk feeding grounds. "They're having weekend wolf-hunting parties by snowmobile," says Suzanne Stone, Defenders of Wildlife's northern Rockies wolf conservation specialist. "It's very easy to kill wolves during this time of year because they're so stationary. The whole pack tends to keep very close to their den sites." Some wolves have been chased by snowmobiles for miles before being gunned down.
In Idaho, wolves suspected of "molesting or attacking livestock or domestic animals" can be killed without a permit. Montana and Wyoming have also made it easier to shoot a wolf that threatens livestock, and all three states plan to hold wolf-hunting seasons this year. While the wolves that stay in national parks, like Yellowstone and Grand Teton, are still protected, those that stray out of them are at risk of being shot. Since late March, at least 40 wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have been shot dead.
The wave of killing has raised the absurd specter that while the United States spent millions to bring wolves back to the region in the name of conservation, and to restore a fraction of the West to its former wildness, now the wolves will be slaughtered again. On April 28, a coalition of 12 environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, filed suit in federal court against the Bush administration, challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to remove protections for the animals. The lawsuit contends that because the wolves occupy several distinct areas, there's not enough genetic diversity within the small number to ensure the wolf's future. The states' hunting policies will likely drive down that number even further.
"The states legally could kill down to a total of 300 wolves," says Doug Honnold, a lawyer for Earthjustice, lead attorney on the case. "We could have 1,200 wolves killed before the federal government would say relisting this population is appropriate. People have worked so hard to promote wolf recovery, and just as we have victory within our grasp, or approaching our grasp, we're throwing it away and heading in the opposite direction."
With so many wolves already being shot, a federal judge in Montana has rejected a request by the federal government to delay the lawsuit, saying he's "unwilling to risk more deaths." A hearing will be held on May 29 in Missoula to decide if the wolves will be placed back under federal protection for the duration of the case.
Next page: Parks are a nice museum for wolves. Shouldn't that be enough?
The wolf in all of us
Inside the secretive plan to gut the Endangered Species Act
