Wolf's Success Ignites New Debate

Gray wolf's success ignites new debate

Government begins to reduce protections

By Candus Thomson - Baltimore Sun
November 26, 2003

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - The sound of success pierces the cold, still
air like a stiletto.

Howls of gray wolves announce their dominance over the food chain from the
park's Lamar Valley to the ranches of Montana, less than a decade after
wildlife biologists returned them to their traditional habitat.

Bringing wolves back from the brink of extinction is being hailed as an
ecological triumph, so much so that the federal government reclassified the
animal this year from "endangered" to "threatened." The next step toward
removal from the protected species list is for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to transfer responsibility for wolf management to game officials in
Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, possibly late next year.

"We have achieved biological success. Now we are trying to achieve bureaucratic
success," said Ed Bangs, federal wolf recovery coordinator.

Each state submitted a management plan, which was reviewed by a panel of 12
independent scientists. Those critiques were sent back to the states this week
and are to be posted on the Fish and Wildlife Service's Web site. Another round
of public comment will follow before the agency decides.

"Nobody has officially proposed delisting the wolf yet, but even talk gets
people's blood pressure up," Bangs said.

The livestock industry and sportsmen's groups, which have simmered as the wolf
population soared from 31 in the mid-1990s to 750, can't wait for return of
local control.

On the other side, environmental groups fear that a lack of federal oversight
will mean a return to the "shoot, shovel and shut up" mindset that nearly
caused the wolf's demise.

"Wolves are an emotionally charged issue, and they have been for centuries,"
said Douglas Smith, leader of the Yellowstone Wolf Project for the National
Park Service. "Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Romulus and Remus -
the attitudes have been there for years."

Bangs and Smith have heard all of the arguments. Bangs came from Alaska in 1988
to lay the groundwork for the restoration program. Smith moved to Yellowstone
in 1994 to be part of the restoration program and helped trap the original 31
animals in Canada and release them at the park.

Scientists also released 35 wolves in central Idaho and were prepared to
transplant a like number each year for five years. But the wolves' adaptability
made that unnecessary.

Last December, biologists announced that for the third consecutive year the
Greater Yellowstone area had 30 breeding pairs, a goal that triggered the
delisting process.

"We had two times as many wolves as we thought we would and half as many
problems as we thought. So it's a good news, better news story," Bangs said.

Not to ranchers in the three states, who have lost 581 sheep and 214 cattle
since the reintroduction began.

In newspapers across the region, letters to the editor warn that humans will be
targeted by hungry wolves after they devour all the livestock and elk. Wildlife
experts say that is preposterous and demagogic. During a legislative hearing
this year in Helena, Mont., three dozen speakers demanded immediate relief from
a wolf population they said was out of control.

Warren Johnson, a sports outfitter from just outside Yellowstone, said he had
waited patiently for a balance between the wolves and the region's elk herd,
"but there is no balance. Wolves are decimating our wildlife."

Bangs does not buy the argument: "There are 31,000 mountain lions out West that
eat two times as much livestock as wolves. But no one says we need to kill all
the mountain lions the way we still have people saying we have to kill all the
wolves."

Former Yellowstone naturalist Gary Ferguson, author of the 1996 book
Yellowstone Wolves, said the hostility toward the recovery program is all about
the perceived meddling of the federal government in local affairs.

"I wonder if there would have been quite the outrage there if the restoration
had happened naturally. I think probably not," he said.

Biologists consider the wolves "a keystone species" that affects the health of
every other animal in Yellowstone.

When the National Park Service had a strict shoot-on-sight policy for wolves
that eliminated all packs by 1926, "we took the food pyramid and just lopped
off the top," Smith said. "Wolves are the kings and queens of providing meat to
the scavenger population: grizzly bears, ravens, magpies, coyotes and eagles.
Every wolf kill benefits at least five other animals, the most we've gotten is
10."

In addition to helping the ecosystem, the wolves also have been a
multimillion-dollar boon to the tourism industry. Outfitters that lead
snowmobile tours and eagle watches have added wolf itineraries. Visitors with
huge spotting scopes take up positions in the Lamar Valley, hoping to watch
wolves stalk elk herds in the winter and raise their pups in the spring.

"Wolves are so much like us," Bangs said. "We can see ourselves in them - good
and bad - and we project ourselves into them."

Federal officials say the wolf population is leveling off in the northern
Rockies, where growth rates have slowed from 15 percent last year to 11 percent
this year. Yet there are signs that the recovery is breaking new ground.

In September, federal biologists confirmed the existence of a new 16-animal
pack, mostly pups, south of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The sighting
is the eighth wolf pack in Wyoming outside Yellowstone.

On Nov. 5, a Yellowstone visitor saw a pack in the northeast section of the
park, which marked the 1,000th straight day with a wolf sighting.

But 17 environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, do not believe that
success in the park is enough to justify delisting. The groups filed suit last
month against Interior Secretary Gale Norton to stop delisting, saying that
recovery had occurred in just three of nine states in the Western region.
Further, they contended, removing the wolf from federal protection would
curtail recovery elsewhere in the country.

Norton "is backing away from wolf protection before the job is finished and is
jeopardizing all the progress her agency has made so far," said Rodger
Schlickeisen, president of the 430,000-member Defenders of Wildlife.

Defenders officials point out that since 1987 the group has paid market value
to ranchers who have lost livestock to wolves, more than $210,000.

Bangs believes the federal plan will prevail. "So far we've used good science,"
he said. "We've followed the law and we've won every lawsuit."

Although the spotlight has been on the wolves in the three northern Rocky
Mountain states, interest - like the packs - has spread.

In the early 1990s, captive red wolves were successfully released in the
Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina, which has a
population of about 100 animals.

Officials in Wisconsin, which has more than 300 wolves, held a series of
hearings last week on a management plan that would take effect if the wolf is
removed from federal protection.

The Utah Legislature this year urged game officials to develop a plan after a
migrating wolf from Yellowstone was captured in the northern part of the state
last fall. Although they have not had a sighting yet, Colorado wildlife
managers are working on a similar plan.

And in Maine, New Hampshire and New York, state lawmakers passed bills to
prevent transplanting Quebec wolves to remote areas of their states.

"The polarization is already there," said Craig McLaughlin of Utah's Division
of Wildlife Resources, who has been traveling the state taking comments from
residents. "You see the dichotomy between people who make a living off the land
in the southern part of the state who let us know that they really weren't
interested in having wolves, and the people who live in the metropolitan area
who are much more supportive."

The Defenders of Wildlife recovery plan calls for restoring gray wolves
throughout their former range where there is suitable prey and habitat to
support several hundred wolves.

But Smith doesn't think that is realistic. "Wolves don't belong everywhere
they've ever been. They need wild country and we have precious little wild
country left. I'm pro-wolf, but not pro-everywhere."

Ferguson said if the three state management plans pass muster, it is time for
environmental groups to stop putting up legal roadblocks and allow delisting to
proceed.

"America needs and deserves a success in the restoration story," he said. "This
is it."

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