Diary of a Mad Voter: Dan Rostad
Let the Managers, Manage
By Dan Rostad, 2-01-08
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The ink isn’t even dry yet on the new rules in the Federal Register to be published this week, regarding how Montana, Idaho and Wyoming can further manage the wolves and already several environmental groups are suing.
All of this began back in 1995 when the infamous “buttinsky” from Arizona, Bruce Babbitt, enlisted all his authority as Secretary of the Interior to bring about one of the most contentious and divisive federal mandates the West has endured by reintroducing gray wolves into the Yellowstone National Park ecosystem.
Since that day, the wolf has thrived and now numbers more than 200 packs in these three states with a conservative head count of more than 1500. Many in the game management community have hailed this reintroduction program as a success.
Even Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, recently called the wolf population in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, “robust and resilient.” But never mind the experts opinions and their well-worn management plans, the do-gooders in the environmental community are engaging in legal action to thwart what has been a long effort of planning for just this situation.
In an effort to manage the new thriving wolf population, which has already had devastating effects on the livelihood of livestock producers in these three states and is threatening to adversely affect wildlife populations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants make it easier to kill wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho that are believed to be ”one of the major causes” of certain elk herds failing to meet state population goals.
Bangs goes on to say, “We made the wolf management more flexible with the recognition that with more wolves comes more conflicts.” These rules won’t change an already booming wolf recovery, but instead offer help to the state wildlife managers whose job it is to not only manage the wolves, but also the native elk herds.
The point is for more than a decade, wildlife managers and wolf recovery experts have been working hand-in-hand with state and local officials to put together management plans for the wolf, up to and beyond the delisting of this predator as an “endangered species”.
All along the way, there have been a lot of voices to be heard on the issues surrounding wolf recovery. All three states have held public meeting after public meeting – I don’t think you could contain the written records of all these meetings in one room.
We have well paid officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service whose job is to make these management plans work and along come the naysayers who will never be satisfied, enlisting the wrath of the federal court system to undo all this cooperative work. Those California boys of the Ninth Circuit Court already have too much too much influence on the West, don’t let them be the judges of a management plan for wolves the Rocky Mountains.
“I think it could be used to kill hundreds of wolves,” said Louisa Willcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council (formerly of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition).
“State agencies are under a lot of pressure from hunters that don’t get their elk to blame it on wolves and then kill wolves,” said Mike Leahy with Defenders of Wildlife in Bozeman, MT.
The Sierra Club and Greater Yellowstone Coalition have also berated the fed’s plan and are threatening action. Give me a break, these guys just don’t get it!
Montana’s Governor Brian Schweitzer supports the ruling for game managers to control wolves in areas where deer and elk populations are adversely affected. In an interview last week with Billings television station KTVQ, the Governor was quoted as saying that if wolves are affecting livestock or wildlife, they will be shot. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has also proposed and is planning a hunting season for wolves in Montana next year, given they are delisted later this month.
Wyoming wildlife planners are also proposing management controls by allowing hunting of wolves outside of Yellowstone National Park in the near future.
Wolves need to be managed for the sake of the entire ecosystem and they should be managed by those professionals whose job it is to do so, whether that is in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or those state wildlife agencies in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. They are the experts and should be allowed to do their job, without the intimidation of predator and environmental groups who will only serve to stall this long overdue plan.
They say that, if you have enemies, you don’t need solutions. Well in this situation, a lot of groups have found a lot of enemies. Now is the time for solutions and those solutions have already been well thought out and are well grounded. The Sierra Club, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and Natural Resources Defense Council need to quit looking for enemies and let the professional wildlife managers, manage the wolves.
Editor’s note: Dan Rostad’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
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Comments
Take statements like these:
"[T]he do-gooders in the environmental community are engaging in legal action to thwart what has been a long effort of planning for just this situation."
"The point is for more than a decade, wildlife managers and wolf recovery experts have been working hand-in-hand with state and local officials to put together management plans for the wolf, up to and beyond the delisting of this predator as an “endangered species”."
One very primary reason there has been a "long effort of planning", as opposed to a short one, is because Wyoming took the feds to court about 5 seconds after the announcement that wolves were being re-introduced. Then if memory serves, the went to court again when the management plan was getting hashed out, then they submitted a terrible management plan that even the Bush cronies at Interior couldn't approve (and when you have Abramoff hacks like Griles and Sansonetti having to hide from your plan you've got problems). When this plan was turned down they sued again.
So Dan, you are whining about those enviros and their darn lawsuits, but I think if you stacked up the entire environmental group paper trail vs. that of only the state of Wyoming, I think you would see that Wyoming is being far more of a burden to our courts. Glass houses dude.
"if you have enemies, you don’t need solutions."
Now you used that little jingle again in this article? Do you have that tattooed on your arm?
Let's see how well you "play with others":
Babbit [sic] is the "infamous buttinsky" [sic] from Arizona".
Federal judges are "[t]hose California boys ".
You also deride environmental interest groups for doing what people give them money to by saying that "Give me a break, these guys just don’t get it!"
I just don't think you "play well with others" Dan.
As for Babbitt, he managed to keep a surface veneer of goody goody, but if one digs beneath the surface, it is a little different.
A service station in Shoshoni had T-shirts during the big introduction that said "Bobbit Babbitt.
What does that mean, exactly?
For Ed Bangs and Wyoming politicians and the ag interests, it means that wolves will be managed by professionals, so nothing to worry about.
For the environmental groups, it means that the wolf management plan is now so flexible, so loosey-goosey, that it can be interpreted in such a manner that there are no meaningful limits on how many wolves can be shot in the "trophy" zone surrounding Yellowstone.
The plan's flexibility is so extreme, subjective and non-scientific that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between wolf management in the "trophy" zone or the "predator" zone, where wolves can be shot, trapped, poisoned and eradicated.
This is exactly what the Wyoming Stock Growers and Woolgrowers wanted and what the Wyoming Legislature intended. Governor Freudenthal, for all that he claims to be a member of the Democratic Party, has betrayed the conservation community and caved on this issue, so as to buy peace with the reactionary ag community.
The goal is simple -- massive and complete eradication of wolves outside the boundaries of Yellowstone. And because wolves follow elk outside the park, the "protected" packs inside the park will always experience losses outside the park -- maybe not enough to eradicate the wolf population inside Yellowstone, but certainly enough to keep it down.
There are certain areas and wolf packs where the wolves prefer livestock, and they did in the old days too. Meeteetse is one, and the upper Green is another. I have read excerpts from Otto Franc's diary written in the late 1800s, and day after day he tells of wolf killed calves in the yard.
When the wolves leave Yellowstone it is because the predator to prey ratio is too high and they have killed off too many elk. When there is no food left in the park they will leave, you can pretty much bank on that. Unfortunately the loss of elk will affect the bears too. It will be interesting to see if FWS will count in the spring, they just couldn't get to it on any nice days. They will be able to blame the severe loss of elk on the bad bad winter we have, which of course is going to play a huge roll, but there is no way to lessen the wolf impact from continuing and they will have great difficulty, if it is even possible to rebound from it. The very low calf/cow ratio of the last few years is going to mean the elk are mostly older and less able to withstand the terrible winter we are having.
The worst enemy to the continued presence of wolves has been the hoggishness of environmentalists who want MORE, no matter whether there is adequate prey for them or not.