Judge Strikes Down Wolf-Recovery Effort

In a move that may end one of the most successful conservation experiments in recent history, a Wyoming federal judge on Friday found a wolf-recovery program illegal and ordered the removal of Canadian wolves reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.

U.S. District Judge William Downes, ruling in a lawsuit brought three years ago by a consortium of ranchers and farmers, stayed his order pending appeal by the Interior Department.

Essentially, Downes ruled that the federal government was out of bounds in reintroducing the species in a region where it already existed, further jeopardizing livestock and native wolves.

“Mindful of the dedication, talents and money which have been expended in the development and implementation of the wolf-recovery program,” Downes concluded, “the court reaches this decision with the utmost reluctance.”

Beyond trying to recapture the estimated 165 animals in question and shipping them back to Canada, federal wildlife authorities here said they have no firm contingency plan if their anticipated appeal fails.

If Canada won’t take them, officials said, the resilient, intelligent beasts--and their offspring--may have to be shot.

“It’s shocking--off the charts in terms of being a ridiculous decision,” said Hank Fisher, northern Rockies representative for the Defenders of Wildlife, a group that has been compensating ranchers for livestock taken by Yellowstone wolves.

“My guess is this ruling is based on a mistake somebody made,” he said. “This program is working better than fine. The wolves are doing well. We won’t stand for taking them out of the park.”

Ed Bangs, coordinator of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf-recovery program in Yellowstone, would not go that far. “We will appeal, but we will obey the law of the land,” he said.

Ranchers hailed the ruling as a major victory and vindication of their efforts to halt the $7-million federal project that they have always feared could deplete livestock.

“It’s an early Christmas present for the ranchers of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho,” said Steve Lechner of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, an advocacy group that represented the Wyoming Farm Bureau in the lawsuit.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Dean Kleckner agreed, saying the ruling could help stem what he called “overzealous regulation by the government.”

At stake is a project designed to bring wolves back to the top of the food chain in the nation’s oldest national park. With 85 wolves in several packs now loping through the forests, significant repercussions already are being recorded throughout the 2.2-million-acre park’s wildlife hierarchy.

Before they were vanquished by government-backed poison-and-trapping campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries, wolves thrived in nearly every region of North America.

Once numbering in the millions, only a few thousand wolves are left in the Lower 48 and about 7,000 in Alaska, according to game officials. Their absence disrupted the natural predator-and-prey relationships throughout the Rocky Mountain region and resulted in a population explosion of deer and elk.

Biologists believe that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s project, which is based on years of consultation with scientists and 160,000 public comments, succeeded because of the abundance of game and Yellowstone’s status as a remnant of America’s wild frontier.

The goal has been to create a breeding population of 100 wolves in Yellowstone and in Idaho within five years, and then remove wolves from the endangered species list.

However, the project’s reintroduced wolves were considered “experimental populations,” meaning they lacked federal endangered species protections and could be shot if discovered feeding on livestock.

Native wolves migrating south from Montana and Canada occasionally mix with the experimental populations, thereby losing their federal protections.

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Ridding the regions of reintroduced wolves, Downes ruled, would bring Endangered Species Act restrictions back into full play, along with their ban on killing wolves.

“Congress did not intend to allow reduction of protections to existing natural populations in whole or in part,” Downes ruled.

“That’s the decision we’ve been waiting for,” said Dave Kelly, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which has nearly 5 million members.

“The potential damage was always there,” he said. “A farmer never knew when a gray wolf would roam onto his property and slaughter livestock.”