The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday that it is ready to remove gray wolves in the northern Rockies from the endangered-species list when Wyoming’s plan to manage the predators is up to par.
Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal called the move “political blackmail” to pressure Wyoming into yielding to the federal government’s management plan – a move he says the state doesn’t intend to make.
Ed Bangs, the federal service’s gray wolf recovery coordinator, said Wyoming’s current law allows wolves to be killed at any time and by anyone – a practice that doesn’t meet the agency’s recovery goals for the species.
“The Wyoming plan and state law needs some tweaking to meet our standards,” Bangs said.
Freudenthal said after a December meeting with senior Department of Interior officials that it was clear the department “was going to do what it could to turn up the political pressure and continue to ignore the science. None of this comes as a surprise.”
Environmental groups such as the Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife cheered the move to wait to delist the wolves until the states where they roam develop acceptable management plans.
Federal officials have already turned over most of the day-to- day management of wolves to Montana and Idaho.
Wolves were almost wiped out in the United States by settlers but have rebounded in recent years. The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there are more than 800 wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.
The agency’s proposal comes a decade after biologists released more than 60 wolves from Canada into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho, a move hailed by most environmental groups as a conservation success story.
In 2004, state wildlife officials confirmed the first wild wolf had entered Colorado. That wolf, a young, radio-collared female from Yellowstone, was found dead near Idaho Springs off Interstate 70. A year later, the state wildlife commission approved a plan to manage packs that came into Colorado. That plan says the state will let wolves roam wherever they choose, but urges action on troublemakers, including killing wolves that prey on livestock.
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
