Two years of sport hunting have taken a toll on the gray wolves in the U.S. Northern Rocky Mountains. Their population is down by 34 percent after what one biologist satirically calls a “robust” hunting season.
Tags: · endangered species, Fish and Wildlife Service, gray wolves, Idaho, mammalogists, Montana, Predator Defense, sport hunting, Wolves, Wyoming
Congress removed the Rocky Mountain gray wolves from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act yesterday, passing a rider in the budget bill that takes the wolves in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah off the ESA list.
Environmentalists have been railing against this possibility for days, both on the grounds that the wolves need continued federal protection and that Congress has no right to make changes to the Endangered Species Act without input from scientists.
Tags: · Congress, Endangered Species Act, gray wolves, greenrightnow.com, Rocky Mountain wolves
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Every so often I pause and wonder about the Rocky Mountain wolves, which were de-listed from protections under the Endangered Species Act in 2009 and hunted for sport for the first time in decades.
I have thought about the wolves periodically all this winter, as they’ve been hunted in Idaho. As of today, 172 wolves have been killed there, just shy of the 220 kill limit set by the state, where the wolf season ends March 31. Last fall, in Montana, 72 wolves were killed, just short of the 75 wolf limit.
I’m not sure why their plight touched me so much. I think it’s their intelligence and curiosity that tugs at my emotions. Sensing humans nearby, they will peek out from their cover to see, only to get shot. And there’s the fact that they’re pack animals, dependent on an enduring family structure and very much like us in that regard.
Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, ecosystems, endangered species, gray wolves, habitat decline, Rocky Mountain wolves, Western habitat
From Green Right Now Reports
At least three of Idaho’s wolves have been killed as hunting commenced this week under the first authorized sport wolf hunt in the lower 48 states.
But while the hunt has attracted sportspeople, it has repelled others. A Lewiston-area man who killed the first wolf on opening day told the local media that he has received numerous calls of protest.
Robert Millage, a real estate agent, says he’s been called a “wolf murderer, a fat redneck and other names” in some 50 phone calls and hundreds of e-mails, according to the Lewiston Tribune. (To see a picture of the young wolf Millage killed view the story on Lewiston’s KLEW-TV.)
Tags: · Defenders of Wildlife, endangered species, Friends of Animals, gray wolves, Idaho, Montana, Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf, Rodger Schlickeisen, Suzanne Stone, Wolf hunting, Wolves, Wyoming, Yellowstone
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
In a last minute move anticipated and decried by environmentalists, the Bush Administration has removed a large segment of the Rocky Mountain gray wolves and western Great Lakes gray wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Interior Department officials cited the wolves’ recovery in those areas, saying that the animals populate those areas in sufficient numbers to survive without being listed as endangered (in the case of the Rocky Mountain packs) or threatened (the Great Lakes wolves).
Tags: · Bush Administration, Endangered Species List, gray wolves, US Fish & Wildlife
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift