No wonder people are mad.
Fifteen years ago the recovery goal for gray wolves in the greater Yellowstone area was 300 wolves in three states.
Today there are nearly 1,500 wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho yet the critters still aren’t considered recovered enough to hunt.
A reporter friend of mine who has written about the reintroduction of wolves since its inception, says the feds keep moving the goalposts.
Montana’s first public wolf hunt was to begin this year before a federal judge pulled the plug pending resolution of a lawsuit by a coalition of environmental groups.
Now those same groups, who have enjoyed the anonymity of simply being called environmentalists, are refusing to fund a program that compensates ranchers for livestock killed by wolves. And the Livestock Loss Reduction and Mitigation Program, which is attached to the State Department of Livestock, is running out of money. Paying for the 91 sheep killed by wolves near Dillon will reduce the remaining funds by nearly half.
But times are tough on environmental groups, too. Wine and cheese fundraisers cost more to put on than they used to and the fewer dollars coming in sure aren’t going to pay for some redneck rancher’s slaughtered livestock.
The estimated 1,455 wolves that roam portions of the three states, however, are eating well. In 2007, wolves killed 183 cattle, 213 sheep, 14 goats and llamas and 10 dogs. So far this year a registered quarterhorse was killed near Kalispell and a border collie was killed north of Helena.
And that’s just livestock. No one’s keeping track of the wild game gobbled up by wolves except hunters who have seen elk hunting around Yellowstone National Park change dramatically following the introduction of the gray wolf.
But that’s apparently OK. Elk and deer, not livestock, were the intended fodder and remain so today.
“To ensure the survival of wolves, these magnificent animals need to expand their range throughout the western states,” says John Marvel of the Western Watersheds Project. “There are many public lands across the West with abundant deer and elk populations that can and should sustain wolves.”
And if they don’t, there’s always livestock to eat.
Here are the groups no longer putting their money where their mouths are that have sued to stop the wolf hunt: Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project and Wildlands Project.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net