King’s Outdoor World Blog

Wolf Delisting Lawsuit Has Begun

April 29th, 2008 David King - King's Outdoor World

April 28, 2008

MISSOULA, MT— Twelve conservation groups today filed a federal court lawsuit challenging the federal government’s decision to remove the northern Rockies gray wolf population from the list of endangered species. Wolves should not have been delisted, the groups argue, because they remain threatened by biased, inadequate state management plans, as well as by the lack of connections between largely isolated state wolf populations.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s premature decision to strip the protections of the Endangered Species Act from the northern Rocky Mountains’ wolves promises to undo the hard-earned progress toward wolf recovery of recent years. State laws that guide wolf management in the wake of delisting betray the states’ continued hostility toward the presence of wolves in the region. While ensuring that wolves can and will be killed in defense of property or recreation, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana have refused to make enforceable commitments to maintaining viable wolf populations within their borders. The states have failed to keep track of recent wolf killings and also neglected to secure funding for essential monitoring and conservation efforts.

Earthjustice filed the lawsuit on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project, and Wildlands Project .

So there we have it. It is no surprise to anyone that a lawsuit was just 60 days away from the de-listing date. We will wait and see what merit this lawsuit brings and how it will affect the de-listing that has already taken place.

So what about all of this rhetoric? I asked for permission to post this comment from Maury Jones (Jonesy), an outfitter from Wyoming, on his statements he made concerning the fight over the wolf:

This is a letter I wrote to an online sportsmen’s blog. One of my former hunters had written a post complaining of the wolves out west. After reading the comments to his post, which mostly defended the wolf introduction, I was incensed and wrote the below reply.

Jonesy

Dear sportsmen,
I just read the original post regarding the negative impacts wolves are having on our elk, and I read the almost unbelievable replies from people who are supposedly sportsmen. The wolf-worshippers/anti-hunters/eco-freaks have certainly done a fine job of brainwashing. I live in Wyoming and have been heavily involved in the wolf controversy from the beginning. We have seen how many lies have been told regarding the wolves, and unfortunately they are very good at telling the lies to get you to believe it is just returning Yellowstone to “natural conditions”.

Here are the facts:
1. The US Fish and Wildlife Service introduced a non-native specie to the Yellowstone region. The native wolf was the Rocky Mountain Wolf, which hunted in pairs and weighed 80 pounds maximum. The Canadians hunt in packs, sometimes as large as 27 wolves, and weigh in excess of 150 pounds. NOTHING in the region can stand up to them. So the USFWS, controlled by the wolf-worshippers, broke the Endangered Species Act by introducing a non-native specie.

2. Wolves did not commonly inhabit Yellowstone. Strong evidence shows that wolves rarely entered Yellowstone in the 77 years prior to 1913 (National Park Service Documents, “The Wolves of Yellowstone” Weaver 1978). Also, an official government document, Yellowstone Animal Census, 1912, lists various animals and their numbers, but under Gray Wolves the total is listed as NONE (Hornaday, Our Vanishing Wildlife, pg 336).

3. Wolves don’t kill only to sustain themselves. They often kill for sport. In 2005 in one night a lone she-wolf killed 29 sheep in Pinedale. The USFWS came the next day, tracked it down by air from its radio collar and found that it was 20 miles away, so they left it alone. Two weeks later it returned to the same herd and killed 13 sheep. At the Camp Creek elk feedground a lone wolf killed five calf elk, eating about 5 pounds of meat. Just having fun. In spring of 2006 about 40 sheep belonging to Jim Magagna were killed in a pasture near Farson, Wyoming. Many many times we have found deer and elk carcasses killed by wolves with only a little bit of meat eaten. My friend, Royce Hoopes, resigned as elk feeder in the Gros Ventre because every morning he would have to shoot 3 or 4 elk who were maimed overnight by wolves. The most common maiming would be that the noses and lips of the elk were eaten off, leaving the elk alive. The wolves would run them out into the deep snow and when the elk were so exhausted they couldn’t go further, the wolves would eat on them without killing them.

4. The Dunoir Valley, northwest of Dubois, Wyoming was the home of over 100 moose for the past 60 years. Now there are almost no moose in the Dunoir, the Washakie Pack of wolves having eliminated them. One of the very last moose calves was killed in the Dunoir within 20 feet of the house of Budd Betts. It had been living right next to the house trying to avoid the wolves.

5. The Betts family dog was killed on their front lawn in broad daylight by two wolves right in front of Budd and his wife and kids. Budd and a hired hand ran the wolves off by shooting over their heads. You are damned right we are scared of the wolves!!!!

6. The Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd numbered over 19,000 when they introduced the wolves. Now they number about 7,000. The only thing that has changed is wolves.

7. The Final Rule For Introduction of the wolf promised that when there were 100 wolves for 3 years, they would delist the wolf and turn management over to the state. That threshold was met in 2002. There are now over 1,700 wolves. The Environmental Impact Statement examined the effect of 100 wolves on the Yellowstone ecosytem, and 300 wolves in the tri-state areas of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. The present number of wolves exceeds the study by more than 5 times.

8. If you wonder what the wolf is doing to our huntable wildlife out west just do the math. According the feds, each wolf is responsible for killing 1.9 elk per month or the equivalent. That is 20 elk per year killed per wolf. We have, officially, 1,700 wolves. That is 34,000 elk killed by wolves each year. It doesn’t take much of a mathematician to understand that there is a crash of epic proportions happening.

I could go on and on about this. In conclusion, it is painfully apparent that the wolf-introducers are not wanting to “balance” nature, but are mainly interested in killing off the surplus game so there will be nothing left for us to hunt. If you have too many deer in your neighborhood, please come get some of our wolves. Then you can watch as your game and your livestock is destroyed, and you will have to drive your children to the bus stop and keep them in the car until the bus comes, because the wolves are sitting there in the snow watching them wait for the bus. That is happening.

Yes, we are mad about you eastern ignoramuses cramming the wolf down our throats and destroying our way of life. Please study up on this issue before you defend the indefensible position of reintroduction of wolves.

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