By Harriet M. Hageman and Kara Brighton, Hageman and Brighton, P.C.
On April 2, 2009, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) issued yet another “Final Rule” in the ongoing wolf “reintroduction” disaster. The latest FWS decision was issued in an obvious attempt to appease the environmentalists’ hand-picked Montana federal district court judge who attempted to erect a major roadblock to delisting by concluding that there was insufficient “genetic exchange” between wolf “subpopulations,” that Wyoming had “failed to commit” to managing for at least 15 breeding pairs, that there were alleged problems with the size of Wyoming’s trophy game area, and criticism of Wyoming’s steadfast decision to designate wolves as predators in part of the State (i.e., those areas of Wyoming that the FWS identified as “unsuitable” for wolf habitat). The FWS’s latest effort to foist the responsibility and expense of managing the non-native Canadian gray wolves onto the States is to “delist” such animals in Idaho and Montana, as well as parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah, and to retain them as a “non-essential experimental” population in Wyoming. <<<read the rest>>>
Tom Remington
