COULD IT ALL HAVE BEEN OVER ON SEPTEMBER 30?
Leading Sportsman Blasts Montana Senators for Derailing Wolf Delisting
Wildlife conservation group says the wolf would already be exempted from the Endangered Species Act if it had not been for Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester.By Bill Schneider, 10-07-10
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| Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. | |
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The founder of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife (SFW), a multi-state conservation group that has been aggressively pushing for a congressional resolution to the wolf delisting controversy, claims Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both Democrats, are not his allies.
Instead, he insists, both the Montana Senators worked behind the scenes to actually derail delisting efforts at the same time they were jointly introducing a bill to delist the wolf.
No, I’m not making it up.
Don Peay, SFW founder, recently returned from a seven-day “20-hour per day” lobbying effort in Washington, D.C. The goal of his trip was to have a bill introduced by Congressman Chet Edwards (D-TX) tacked as a rider onto the September 30 Continuing Resolution (CR), a common practice where Congress punts on passing a budget and instead extends the current level of spending to keep the federal government running.
He was in the Capitol City with three other prominent regional conservation leaders, Miles Moretti, Clint Bentley and Ted Lyon, and the group had a face-to-face meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) about the rider.
“He told us he wanted to get something done,” Peay wrote in a blogpost, ‘but Leader Reid did NOT make a time commitment.”
“I don’t like to speak for others, but several prominent sportsmen had MAJOR discussions with Senators Baucus and Tester for WEEKS, about getting behind the Edwards bill,” Peay wrote. “Had the Senate passed it, due to Rules, the House had no choice but to accept the CR as written, no conference, no back and forth, etc. It would have been done.”
Peay called the Edwards bill “carefully researched” and written “by a very successful Texas trial attorney and strong democrat,” but HR. 6028 is very brief (one-page, 103-words). You can read it here, but this is the key section: “The Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) shall not be treated as an endangered species or threatened species for purposes of this (Endangered Species) Act.”
The bill seems to apply to all wolf populations such as those in the Midwest and perhaps even wolf recovery efforts in the Southwest, and certainly the beginning populations in Oregon, Utah and Washington. It would not allow listing under the ESA in the future without another amendment to the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
“In my opinion, had Baucus and Tester gotten behind the Edwards bill, and worked to get it on the Senate CR, Thursday night, wolves would have been off the ESA,” Peay wrote. ‘There was no official vote, but clearly had Senators Tester and Baucus wanted to get this done, it would have been done.”
Instead, Peay charged, “Baucus and Tester fought it tooth and nail.”
You can read his entire blogpost here.
Both Baucus and Tester deny Peay’s interpretation of the events leading up the passage of the Continuing Resolution on September 30
“That’s 100% false.” Kate Downen, a spokeswoman for Senator Baucus, told NewWest.Net in an email in reference to Peay’s charges. “Max introduced a bill that would delist wolves in Montana and put management of wolves back under Montana’s control. While Max believes his bill is a common sense and viable solution to this issue, he’s open to looking at any plan that would put wolf management back in Montana’s hands.”
“This claim is absolutely false,” agreed Andrea Helling, spokeswoman for Senator Tester. “Jon didn’t derail Rep. Edwards’ House bill. It simply was never added to the Senate’s Continuing Resolution. Apparently some folks wanted Rep. Edwards’ bill to be included in a larger Senate bill as part of a backroom deal, and apparently, they’re eager to point fingers because they didn’t get what they wanted.”
Helling also said Senators Tester and Baucus did meet with a few other western senators last Tuesday (9-28) to discuss various wolf proposals. The meeting took place at 4:15 pm, two hours after the Senate invoked closure (voted to end debate) on the Continuing Resolution.
To attach Rep. Edwards’ wolf bill to the Continuing Resolution after cloture, she explained, the Senate would have needed unanimous consent. “There is no way Rep. Edwards’ bill, which exempts all wolves entirely from the purview of the Endangered Species Act, would have passed the Senate with unanimous consent.”
Early this week, Senators Baucus and Tester introduced their own wolf delisting bill, which is more moderate that Edwards’ bill. It calls for delisting as soon as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service accepts management plans written by Idaho and Montana and does not sweep up any other wolf populations. Under this bill, the wolf could be relisted if for some unforeseen reason, the population crashed.
After getting these denials, I asked Peay for more documentation, and I will update this article when I get any additional information.
I also asked Congressman Edwards’s office to comment on the charges, but I did not hear back from his press secretary.
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Comments
One, stabbing the Edwards bill onto the CR might not have passed, but it WOULD have been a recorded vote for future reference -- or it would have solved the problem.
Two, the B/T version is a joke. The plan would have to be approved and certified by the Interior Secretary, and who knows how long that would take and how far the goalposts would move.
The Edwards bill solves the problem of Molloy being the Chief Wolf Biologist In Charge...if the states abuse the right restored to them and re-endanger the wolf, then Congress can always repeal as a rider to some obscure omnibus.
What majority? The one that consists of people who live in CA and NYC,who all donate to groups like Defenders of Wildlife,The Nature Coservancy,Center for Biologic Diversity,etc. Those people? The ones who do not live anywhere near the areas impacted by the wolves?
The same people who agreed that the wolf would be de-listed when populations reached 30 breeding pairs,or 300 animals? The number that was reached years ago?
"The arrogance of these "Sportsmen for Sportsmen" to think that the ESA would be turned on it's ear and all wolves would lose their protections from these neanderthals is comical"
Neanderthals? A bit early in the discussion for name calling isn't it? No one even presented you with facts to show how wrong your view of the issue is yet.
Arrogance? That is what your groups do,ignore the original agreement,then keep a never ending stream of lawsuits going,so the lawyers get or stay rich,while the "neanderthal" hunters do,and have done far more for wildlife conservation just through buying firearms,ammo,tags,permits and licenses.
You are still arrogant enough to think you will win this? The ESA is not going to stop the wolf from being de-listed,only in your fantasies in your own little world,where there are no humans.
" Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. "
THAT is an apt description of the Great Wolf Debate.
I'm the guy who has a line of logic applying Werner Heisenberg's Uncertanty Principle to wolf recovery , if that helps... the part that says the very act of measuring something changes that something.
For starters.
Frankly , I disagree with that great quantum physicist of our time from Utah and founder of Sportsmen for Sportsmen and an aside to Fish and Wildlife , Don Peay's latest premise here that certain Senators derailed delisting.
It was actually the Wyoming Stockgrowers who utterly monkeywrenched wolf delisting. We could've had an acceptable Wyoming wolf management plan about 8 years ago, until when at the last moment the cattlemen insisted on that stupid dual status Varmint provision for wolves away from Yellowstone. Since Wyoming Game and Fish is in liege with the Stockgrowers, it was the both of them who derailed delisting by inserting Predator into the plan in late 2002 or 2003 at a Wyo G & F meeting. The G &F;went along with the ranchers , and the rest as they say is history.
What sad commentary that Wyoming's state wildlife agency has self-corrupted into being a big game farm operation and beholden to bovines.
Wolves are wildlife, and deserve to be managed as such , not as nuisance animals to be treated as vermin.
THAT is why we do not have delisting. Not Tester and Baucus. More like Freudenthal and the Cattle Barons and their red shirted range dicks.
Enough with the lame talking point of how much hunters do for wildlife conservation. The only reason why hunters pay for these items is because they are forced to! You think it makes sense to strip protection for all the wolves in this country just because two states can't accept the law when the real issue is the 19th century wildlife management plan that the state of Wyoming thinks is acceptable? A majority of people in this country know that predators like wolves and grizzlies are under assault from the special interests in the hunting community and livestock industry. Whine, whine , whine "They are "decimatin" our elk and game herds! Hunters are lazy and they don't want to work for the kill- that's why the hillbillies in the west and in Texas like the game preserves- even the most pathetic hunter can kill an animal
I'll save the long-winded argument. This is how it comes down :
A Preservationist spends 52 weeks of the year trying to save an animal and its habitat.
A Conservationist spends 50 weeks of the year preserving the same animal so he/she can spend the other two sees killing it....
That explains Sportsmen for Sportsmen , and Wildlife and Fish When It Suits Them, , doesn't it ? Peay's organization is not about wildlife and fish at all...it's a political lobby group for uniting sportsmen. At least my very politically boisterous Big Horn Basin (WY) chapter of SFW is....
"support Malloy" is wrong, make an educated guess based on an understanding of the law is what happened.
BTW - It's Molloy, not Malloy.
So be careful casting your SH_T and aspersions too close to where you sleep and eat, children...
Spell away....
Wyoming drew a line in the dirt. Good for them -- there always comes a point where "this and no more" is the appropriate response.
Has anyone besides me noticed that lots and lots of varmint species are now "endangered?" Grizzlies, wolves, bull trout? All three not particularly loved by those parts of the country most familiar with them, for some reason.
Besides, look at the actual numbers. Wolves kill very few cattle as a percentage of what dies or gets killed...the National Geographic story a few months ago had numbers, and wolf kill was surprising low given all the hysteria.
When numbers need some control in particular areas, a hunt is certainly the best way to go. Tax payer money used to control the numbers is just plain stupid. Of course it could be worse. The morons in Alaska are thinking about alowing trapping of black bears using snares. Are we really that barbaric of a society? If the numbers need control in certain areas, why not a hunting season? But I digress...
One last thought....I get such a kick out of the “stay out of my state with your opinion” that goes on. Well fine. Maybe the federal highway subsidies, farm bill subsidies…etc. etc. that only exist because of and by a tax paying population in heavily populated areas…maybe their tax dollars should stay out of “your” state too. Sure, take their money, but of course they have no rights to have an opinion as to what should happen on federal lands that also belong to them. How hypocritical.
There isn't much to write which hasn't been said already, and far be it from me to try a reasoned debate on the internet, but I just want to say how enlightening reading these sorts of comment sections always is. Thanks to Dean especially for the "insight."
Study about how the balance of Nature is being altered every day
by us and all we do. Study about how man is inhumane to man and other living beings. Study about what effects we have had on everything we have been given for free.
The environment - we should all care as we all live in an environment - at least so far. What are we doing to it? What are we doing to other people? Nations? Do you or do you not care?
( http://mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/ ; http://www.lobowatch.com )