Defenders of Wildlife Blog

The Upper Hoback of the Wyoming Range is part of a vital wildlife corridor for many species, including the imperiled Canada lynx.

It’s been almost a year since we heard about the U.S. Forest Service’s plan to allow oil and gas drilling in the Upper Hobackregion of the Wyoming Range, but the wait was well worth it. We learned on Friday that PXP, the oil company proposing to drill 136 new wells in a critical wildlife corridor, agreed to sell their leases and forego the project entirely!

This is a major victory for the broad coalition known as The Citizens for the Wyoming Range, which has been battling the environmentally damaging proposal for more than a year and a half. With the help of the Trust for Public Land, the coalition negotiated a buyout of all of PXP’s existing drilling leases throughout the entire Bridger-Teton National Forest, and the leases will be retired forever. That means the myriad species that use the forest–deer, elk, moose, bears, bobcats, pronghorn antelope, lynx and more–can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Defenders played an important role in raising awareness of the disastrous drilling proposal. By sending out alerts to our members, we were able to help generate more than 60,000 comments in opposition to the proposal. Further, Defenders expert David Gaillard led an independent effort to document wildlife that travel through the Upper Hoback region. He set up remote cameras to photograph all the species that would be at risk of losing vital habitat if drilling was allowed to occur. See a photo slideshow of his trip to setup the cameras, as well as the video below summarizing what he found:

Tragically, Dave died at the end of last year in a ski accident, so it only feels right to dedicate this incredible win for wildlife to all his hard work. And thanks to all Defenders supporters for helping to make this a lasting part of Dave’s legacy!

Read more about Defenders efforts to protect wildlife in our national forests.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has just confirmed our fears in Wyoming — wolves in that state are now officially being removed from the protections of the Endangered Species Act, and will be vulnerable to the state’s wildlife management plan, a document hardly worthy of the name. Since speaking with officials at the White House and the USFWS, I knew this day could be coming soon, but I hoped that those with the power to make this decision would see reason and allow science, not politics, to carry the day.

To add insult to injury, the announcement was made today – the Friday before Labor Day weekend. Many people in a position to react to this news — policy officials, legislators, the media  — are likely taking an early day off to enjoy the long weekend. Unfortunately, it is a common practice in Washington, D.C., to use a day like this to make an announcement that one is fairly certain will not be well-received. It can be made to a minimal audience, while few may be paying attention, and then hopefully forgotten about through the many distractions of a holiday weekend. A common practice, but a cowardly one.

Now, wolves in Wyoming are more vulnerable than they have been in decades. The state’s management plan allows for the unregulated killing of wolves throughout most of Wyoming. Those who wish to kill wolves in all but a small portion of the state will not need to buy tags or permits. There will be no bag limits no wolves, or any requirement to report wolf kills. Anyone will be free to eliminate wolves by almost any means, from shooting to gassing them in their dens, even on national forests and wildlife refuges. There will be a quick and merciless effort to bring the wolf population down to the lowest possible number without triggering a re-listing. Wolves will be treated as vermin, instead of being protected as the still-recovering species that they really are. And all of this could start as soon as October 1 — sooner, if the USFWS decides to waive the traditional 30-day waiting period between the announcement and the effective date.

Though I hoped for a better outcome, we at Defenders have also made sure that we were prepared for the worst, if it came to that. We’ll be taking this fight to the courts to show the administration and the USFWS that this so-called management plan is unacceptable. Its approval is questionable, its methods are reckless, and the low bar that it sets for wildlife recovery under the Endangered Species Act has the potential to place hundreds more endangered species in harm’s way. It is a dangerous precedent, and we cannot allow it to stand.

In the meantime, if you are as upset by this decision as we are, there are two things you can do. The first is to spread the word. Tell others about this situation, and raise awareness, instead of allowing the decision to pass quietly. You can also give feedback directly to the parties responsible through the links and phone numbers below:

White House (202-456-1111)
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (1-800-344-9453)
Department of the Interior (202-208-3100)

You can also help support our efforts to fight the delisting through legal channels by clicking here.

Together, we worked for years to help bring wolves back from the brink in one of the most successful wildlife conservation efforts in U.S. history. We have come so far. If we have to keep fighting to prevent them from turning back the clock, then that’s exactly what we’ll do.

Washington’s Wedge Pack under fire – In case you missed our alert on Tuesday, Defenders raised the red flag this week on unwarranted attempts to remove a wolf pack in Washington. The Wedge Pack, one of the state’s newest, has been implicated in several livestock depredations based on shoddy evidence. Our own wolf expert Suzanne Stone and two other seasoned livestock investigators reviewed the depredation reports and failed to find any conclusive evidence that wolves were responsible. But the state Department of Fish and Wildlife has moved forward nonetheless, issuing a kill order for up to four wolves in the pack. A female wolf was already killed earlier this month in response to livestock depredations and the rest of the pack could soon follow. That’s why we asked our wolf supporters to contact Gov. Christine Gregoire’s office, as well as senior wildlife officials in Washington to put a stop to this unjustified action.

With only seven or eight confirmed packs in the state, wolf recovery has only just begun. Further, the Wedge Pack connects important wolf habitat in Canada with the rest of the lower 48, ensuring a healthy, sustainable wolf population on both sides of the border. But even more significant is the potential threat this management style poses for wolves in Washington. Killing an entire pack based on limited evidence sets a terrible precedent. Instead, the state should be prioritizing nonlethal deterrents and better animal husbandry practices that allow people and wildlife to coexist.

Here’s a copy of the letter seven conservation groups sent today to Phil Anderson, director of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, asking the state to withdraw its sharpshooters from the field.

See this report from King 5 News in Seattle when the pack was first discovered in July:

No happy ending for Wyoming wolves – Apparently we aren’t the only ones bracing ourselves for the imminent delisting of Wyoming wolves. A New York Times editorial this week said the great success story of wolf recovery in the Northern Rockies may not have such a happy ending:

“But whether this story has a happy ending will depend on the federal government’s willingness to monitor, and revise if necessary, wolf management plans it has agreed to in Idaho and Montana and is about to strike with Wyoming.”

Be sure to check Defenders blog regularly next week for the latest updates on the pending delisting in Wyoming. The pictures below are a good reminder of what’s at stake. The Delta pack resides primarily within Yellowstone National Park but frequently travels beyond park boundaries in search of food. These wolves could be targeted by hunters this fall in Wyoming’s “trophy game” area as soon as they step outside Yellowstone.

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Members of Yellowstone's Delta Pack on Sept. 15, 2011

Delta Pack riverside

Four wolves on the prowl on Aug. 8, 2010

Delta pack finds a snack

Pups at den site at Bridger Lake - June 6, 2010

Delta pups on June 22, 2011

Close-up of 760M on Jan. 28, 2011

760M on February 21, 2010

Hunting show ignores conservation concerns – We didn’t expect much from a program that aired recently on the Sportsman Channel about wolf hunting in Montana, even though it promised to tackle the wolf hunting controversy head on. As this review in the New York Times points out, the show turned out to be a one-sided conversation between hunters and other hunters, completely ignoring any of the legitimate concerns that many conservationists have about killing a recently imperiled species by the hundreds.

“So it would have been a great service if the Sportsman Channel and Mr. Newberg had tried to portray some of the arguments for hunting wolves in a way that nonhunters would understand. But this is clearly a show for hunters — never mind other views. As Mr. Newberg sees it, wolves kill elk and livestock, there cannot be unlimited numbers of wolves, and hunting is the way to keep numbers down: case closed.

There are no wildlife biologists on the show, no one to discuss how to decide what size wolf populations should be or how many elk wolves kill. There is no discussion of any sort, just Mr. Newberg’s claims and then Mr. Newberg hunting.”

See if you agree.

The following blog from Defenders President Jamie Rappaport Clark appeared this morning on Huffington Post.

Like most good fairytales, the story of the gray wolf is truly captivating. Only this fairytale may turn out to have a tragic ending.

When President Clinton appointed me as director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1997, there were about 200 wolves in the Northern Rockies. It was an extraordinary time to be involved in wildlife conservation. An iconic native species that had been carelessly eradicated in the early 1900s was being given a chance to come back. The decision to restore wolves to the West was not without controversy, but most of us at the Fish and Wildlife Service were proud to lead such a historic endeavor. We had the support of our President and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and poll after poll showed that the vast majority of the American people were excited to see wolves returned to the wild.

When I left my post at the beginning of 2001, the population was approaching 500 wolves, and for the next ten years recovery continued apace. At the end of 2011, there were more than 1,700 wolves in the region, including a handful of breeding pairs in Oregon and Washington and a lone male wolf on a journey through parts of northern California. By almost any measure, the return of gray wolves to the Northern Rockies has been an incredible success… until now.

Over the past year, we’ve seen an about-face in the treatment and management of wolves in the Northern Rockies. They’ve gone from being federally protected under the Endangered Species Act to being public enemy number one across much of the region. And it’s about to get even worse.

In May 2011, wolves in Idaho and Montana were booted off the endangered species list by Congress — the first time ever that a species was delisted by lawmakers instead of scientists. Since then, both states have conducted aggressive wolf hunts that have killed more than 500 wolves.

If that wasn’t bad enough, both states are ramping up their wolf-killing efforts this coming fall. Idaho has doubled their already excessive bag limit, allowing hunters to kill up to 10 wolves each through a combination of shooting and trapping. Montana has eliminated quotas across most of the state, tripled their bag limit, and will allow widespread trapping.

Photo courtesy of National Park Service.

Both these states claimed they could manage wolves properly if given the chance. Both said they would manage them like other wildlife in the state. But while these states are willing to accommodate thousands of bears and mountain lions, they don’t seem willing to share the land with a healthy number of wolves.

And now, in a matter of days, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will announce that it is stripping federal protections for wolves in Wyoming as well. Wyoming’s goal is to reduce the population to just 100 wolves outside of Yellowstone National Park, allowing the rest to be killed anytime by almost any means, including shooting them from airplanes, trapping and even gassing pups in their dens. That means nearly half of the current population could be eliminated through a combination of hunting and shoot-on-sight predator control within just a few months of delisting.

No other native species is managed to a biological minimum. Reducing the population to such low levels defeats the purpose of restoring wolves in the first place–allowing them to fulfill their important ecological role in maintaining nature’s balance. The goal should be to help the wolf population continue to recover, not put it right back on life support.

Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are seemingly in a race to the bottom after decades spent trying to put wolves back in their rightful place in an ecologically healthy landscape. Across the region, we’re seeing wolves being persecuted once again as unwanted vermin rather than being treated as other valuable wildlife. This harmful attitude is what led to the eradication of wolves nearly a century ago and it is still a persistent threat to wolves today.

Sadly, unless the delisting decision is halted and the states involved begin to treat wolves as they do other wildlife within their borders, the hopeful tale of wolf recovery will have a tragic final chapter. This is the Obama administration’s last chance to write a better ending for what has otherwise been a remarkable national conservation success story.

Sign Defenders’ petition today to help save Wyoming’s wolves! Tell the Obama administration to maintain federal protection for Wyoming’s wolves until the state comes up with better management plan.

It wasn’t so very long ago that the sight of a gray wolf in the northern Rockies was a reason to celebrate. It meant that the hard work of thousands of people for many years was finally paying off, and a species that was nearly snuffed out entirely was beginning to set down roots in its native habitat once again. As a biologist in charge of endangered species conservation for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the time of the wolf reintroduction into the northern Rockies, I was deeply involved in working on the release. Knowing we were finally restoring a key missing piece of the northern Rockies ecosystem was a highlight of my career, and incredibly exciting.

Today, however, I’m stunned that we are fighting to save the same species from the very people who should be working to keep it safe. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has decided, without the scientific data to prove it, that gray wolves no longer require the protection of the Endangered Species Act in the state of Wyoming. They’ve made the same delisting decision before, in Idaho and in Montana — delistings that led to the killing of hundreds of wolves. While the management plans in Montana and Idaho are extremely troubling, Wyoming’s wolf management plan is much worse. Under that plan, wolves in most of the state will be treated as vermin that can be killed at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. Wyoming intends to drive wolves down to the smallest population they can — just above the threshold that could land the species back on the endangered species list. That is no way to manage wolves. In fact, it is unlike any other plan to manage similar wildlife in the area, like mountain lions and bears. Clearly, the ability for wolves to fulfill their natural ecological role in maintaining healthy, balanced ecosystems will be severely compromised, casting their long term recovery into serious doubt. This approach would also cut off routes for wolves dispersing to Colorado or Utah, making it nearly impossible for northern gray wolves to ever return to these important parts of their historic range.

That such a plan could even be entertained is shocking. How could reckless, unregulated killing of wolves be considered a credible plan for a species just barely returned to the region? But even more distressing is the seemingly unqualified support that this plan is receiving. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Department of the Interior. The Obama Administration. These are the voices that should be railing against a plan so completely lacking in scientific reasoning, and so clearly inadequate to sustaining a healthy population of wolves in the region. Instead, they are lowering the bar for the Endangered Species Act, and diminishing what it means to recover imperiled species.

If it seems like this decision cannot possibly have been based on sound science, it’s because it wasn’t. It was based on politics. The Obama Administration wants to be able to point to delisted wolves and say, “Look! The Endangered Species Act works!” I can’t blame them for wanting to say that wolves are recovered — I’d love to be able to say it too. The truth is, the Endangered Species Act can and does work, and gray wolves in the Northern Rockies have made a tremendous comeback. But the recovery  isn’t truly complete until the state plans guarantee the long-term sustainability of wolves in the region, using the best available science and long-trusted wildlife management goals and standards.

President Obama and his administration have prided themselves on bringing science-based decision making back to the White House. But now, when the need for science and reason is critical, the White House is eerily silent. For all of them — for the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of the Interior, for the Obama White House itself — the problem isn’t a lack of scientific reasoning; it’s a lack of political will and courage. It appears that it is safer to claim a hollow victory than to keep working toward a real one. It is easier to say “job well done” than to keep working until it really is.

The Administration may have abandoned the Endangered Species Act with this decision, but I can’t. Having spent years pursuing protection and stability for our most threatened and vulnerable species, I can’t stand by and watch as the administration undermines 40 years of recovery for gray wolves. At Defenders of Wildlife, we’re ready to throw all our weight behind this effort. We’re continuing to talk to the White House and the relevant agencies to show them that this plan cannot be put into action. And if, as we suspect, the delisting is announced in the coming days, we are ready to take the fight to the courtroom. Your support — whether through donations, advocacy, or simply spreading the word — will be invaluable as we pursue this course, and I thank you sincerely for standing with us, and standing up for wolves.

Stop the war on wolves! Tell President Obama to protect Wyoming’s wolves until the state comes up with a better management plan.

When a species is removed from the endangered species list, it should be a cause for celebration. It should mean that success has been achieved, and a species that was once on the brink of being wiped out is now stable enough to live in balance with the environment. It should mean that the organizations and agencies whose responsibility it has been to nurture and protect that species have a plan in place to ensure that that species will not be pushed to the edge of extinction again. Sadly, when it comes to wolves, reality has little to do with what should be.

Wolves have only been delisted for a little over a year in Montana, Idaho, and parts of other northern Rockies states. Yet those states have already started to unravel one of the greatest conservation successes of all time by aggressively targeting wolves.

Without federal protection, wolves have been made more vulnerable to those who would kill them to protect their livestock. Defenders is working hard to show people that there is an easier way. Our projects teach ranchers and other property owners how to coexist with wolves by using nonlethal methods of keeping them away from livestock. It is slow going, trying to change the mindset that has existed in this region for decades, but we’re getting there.

Unfortunately, others have used managed hunts as a means to aggressively reduce wolf populations — something they wouldn’t do for other wildlife species. Since they were delisted in 2011, more than 500 wolves have been killed by hunters and trappers in Idaho and Montana. We’ve known for some time that once Wyoming’s wolves got booted off the endangered species list, the state would be poised to implement an aggressive, wolf-killing agenda. Now it looks like that might happen. Any day now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to remove wolves from the endangered species list in Wyoming, which means that the state’s plans could be set in motion very soon.

Wolves are being persecuted as unwanted vermin rather than being treated like the valuable native wildlife they are.

Wyoming’s current “management” plan could result in more than 100 wolves being killed through a combination of hunting and shoot-on-sight predator control outside Yellowstone National Park. That means more than a third of the state’s current wolf population could be eliminated. Only 100 wolves in a state with tens of thousands of square miles of suitable habitat. Though the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has approved this management plan, there is no scientific justification for cutting wolves down to such low numbers. In fact, no other native wildlife species are managed to a biological minimum in this way. Only wolves.

Across the northern Rockies, we’re seeing wolves being persecuted as unwanted vermin rather than being treated like the valuable native wildlife they are. It’s the same approach that led to the eradication of wolves from the region nearly a century ago, and it is still a persistent threat to wolves today.

With Wyoming getting ready to add its name to the ranks of states willing to wage war on a species just recently brought back from the brink, Defenders is saying enough is enough. We’re going to the top of the ladder and reaching out to President Obama to keep Wyoming from delisting wolves without a proper management plan in place. You can add your voice to the thousands of others in support of Wyoming wolves by sending your own letter to the president. Help us tell him that the goal of delisting a species should be to help the population continue to recover, not put it on life support.

Don’t forget to check back next week to learn more about wolves in Wyoming, and what the state’s management plan will mean for them.