From the New York Times!!!!
Gray Wolves No Longer Need Federal Protection, Obama Administration Says
Published: June 7, 2013
Gray wolves, whose packs now prowl through hundreds of square miles of the northern Rockies and the forests along the Great Lakes, need no more federal protection to prevent their extinction, the Obama administration announced on Friday.
The Fish and Wildlife Service unveiled a proposal to eliminate the remaining endangered-species restrictions that had anticipated the spread of these existing packs into areas like California and the southern Rockies, where there are few, if any, wolves now.
The only wolf populations to have protection going forward would be Mexican wolves in southern Arizona and New Mexico.
The announcement by Dan Ashe, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, marked the imminent end of 50 years of controversial federal efforts to bring back a predator that once roamed the continent, but had been all but exterminated in the United States by the mid-20th century.
?Wolves are recovered and they are now in good hands,? Mr. Ashe told reporters on a conference call. ?States are the most competent people to make the decisions in the future about how many wolves? there should be and ?where wolves can add value to the landscape in the years ahead.?
But environmental groups that focus on biodiversity were quick to criticize the decision, saying that it reflected a parsimonious view of the Endangered Species Act and would hinder the further expansion of the wolves? current range, effectively leaving the species? recovery a work in progress, not an accomplished fact.
Kieran Suckling, the president of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, said, ?What this is really about is the agency saying: We?re closing the door on the recovery of wolves, new wolf populations in new areas. We?re going to be satisfied with a Northern Rockies population, a Great Lakes population and a southwest population.?
The protections available for wolf populations in the northern Midwest have been largely uncontroversial, as was the removal of these populations from the endangered species list in 2011. But in Montana and Idaho, where wolves were reintroduced a generation ago, they were a magnet for bitter controversy, pitting ranchers and hunters against groups dedicated to making the transplanted populations thrive. The federal protections of these populations were removed by Congress two years ago; the gray wolf was delisted in Wyoming last year.
But until the current proposal was made, federal regulations still protected wolves in areas where they once lived, and to which they might return. If the new rule is adopted, that will no longer be the case
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/s...rotection-obama-administration-says.html?_r=0
Tallbuck1
Gray Wolves No Longer Need Federal Protection, Obama Administration Says
Published: June 7, 2013
Gray wolves, whose packs now prowl through hundreds of square miles of the northern Rockies and the forests along the Great Lakes, need no more federal protection to prevent their extinction, the Obama administration announced on Friday.
The Fish and Wildlife Service unveiled a proposal to eliminate the remaining endangered-species restrictions that had anticipated the spread of these existing packs into areas like California and the southern Rockies, where there are few, if any, wolves now.
The only wolf populations to have protection going forward would be Mexican wolves in southern Arizona and New Mexico.
The announcement by Dan Ashe, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, marked the imminent end of 50 years of controversial federal efforts to bring back a predator that once roamed the continent, but had been all but exterminated in the United States by the mid-20th century.
?Wolves are recovered and they are now in good hands,? Mr. Ashe told reporters on a conference call. ?States are the most competent people to make the decisions in the future about how many wolves? there should be and ?where wolves can add value to the landscape in the years ahead.?
But environmental groups that focus on biodiversity were quick to criticize the decision, saying that it reflected a parsimonious view of the Endangered Species Act and would hinder the further expansion of the wolves? current range, effectively leaving the species? recovery a work in progress, not an accomplished fact.
Kieran Suckling, the president of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, said, ?What this is really about is the agency saying: We?re closing the door on the recovery of wolves, new wolf populations in new areas. We?re going to be satisfied with a Northern Rockies population, a Great Lakes population and a southwest population.?
The protections available for wolf populations in the northern Midwest have been largely uncontroversial, as was the removal of these populations from the endangered species list in 2011. But in Montana and Idaho, where wolves were reintroduced a generation ago, they were a magnet for bitter controversy, pitting ranchers and hunters against groups dedicated to making the transplanted populations thrive. The federal protections of these populations were removed by Congress two years ago; the gray wolf was delisted in Wyoming last year.
But until the current proposal was made, federal regulations still protected wolves in areas where they once lived, and to which they might return. If the new rule is adopted, that will no longer be the case
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/s...rotection-obama-administration-says.html?_r=0
Tallbuck1
