Wolves Deslisted in MN/WI/MI

[MNHunter]

LAST EDITED ON Jan-29-07 AT 01:57PM (MST)[p]that should read Delisted.....


Gray wolves removed from endangered list
After 33 years of federal protection, the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan were removed today from the federal endangered species list, a milestone in the animals' dramatic recovery across the Upper Midwest.

By Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune


After 33 years of federal protection, the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan were removed today from the federal endangered species list, a milestone in the animals' dramatic recovery across the Upper Midwest.
Federal officials had been moving toward what is called "de-listing" gray wolves since early in this decade, when they first proposed doing so.

Wolves for decades had been listed as "threatened" in Minnesota and as "endangered" in all other states except Alaska. In 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified all wolves in the eastern half of the United States as "threatened" because their populations had recovered sufficiently in the western Great Lakes area.

In 2004, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove gray wolves in the eastern United States from the threatened list, allowing states and tribes with wolf populations on their lands to manage the wolves. A federal judge, in effect, threw out that plan, shrinking the proposed de-listing states to the three in the Upper Midwest.

Last March, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton took the penultimate step, declaring that the three-state region's wolves had sufficiently recovered from the threat of extinction to be removed from the list.

Wolf-recovery efforts "ensure the wolf is an enduring part of the landscape of the Upper Midwest," she said at the time.

Land of 3,000 wolves

For centuries, wolves in most of the lower 48 states were ferociously hunted and trapped even as their natural habitat shrank, plunging them toward extinction.

Roughly 4,000 of the animals live in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. By far the largest concentration is in Minnesota, where about 3,020 live in about 485 packs averaging between five and six wolves each. Their range is in central and northeastern Minnesota.

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[Huck58]

GREAT NEWS!

Is it all a ploy to try and force Wyoming to go along with the feds and their liberal agenda??????

 

[Huck58]

This was in the Billings paper today. Read the last five paragraphs. Delisting in Utah, Oregon, and Washington. Must be quite a few wolves in those places in order to procede.

FWS announces plan to delist wolves
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today said it plans on delisting wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains by the end of the year - but it's unclear whether wolves in Wyoming will be included.

The agency also said it is removing some 4,000 wolves in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin from the endangered species list. That move will be effective in about a month.

?This is a major success story for conservation achieved under the Endangered Species Act,? said Lynn Scarlett, deputy secretary of the Interior, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service.

There are more than 1,200 wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, the result of an intensive reintroduction effort in the mid 1990s. Federal wolf biologists have said for years that wolf populations in the three states have met biological objectives.

But before federal protections can be removed, each of the three states has to have a management plan approved by the FWS.

Montana and Idaho have plans that have been approved. Wyoming?s plan has not been approved and has been the subject of a long-running dispute with federal officials.

The Interior Department is hoping that the Wyoming Legislature in the coming weeks will change its law governing the management of wolves, including the elimination of a provision classifying some wolves as predators that could be killed without regulation.

Interior officials want Wyoming to classify wolves as trophy game - which would still be subject to a hunting season but would also help ensure that the population could be tracked and managed, federal officials said. They also want to ensure there are 10 breeding packs and 100 wolves in Wyoming, including about 50 to 70 wolves living outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, said Ed Bangs, the agency?s wolf recovery coordinator.

So far, Wyoming legislators have not approved any changes to state law.

If Wyoming doesn't change its law and management plan, delisting could proceed in Montana, Idaho and portions of Oregon, Washington and Utah.

?We will seriously consider that option,? said Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency is hoping soon to release a delisting proposal that for a 60-day comment period. There will then be a review period and a final decision that could be reached by the end of this year.

Advocates on all sides, though, assume the issue will continue to be litigated, which could delay any significant changes in the wolf?s status.

In the meantime, Montana and Idaho continue to have day-to-day management responsibility of wolves in the two states, with the federal government retaining ultimate jurisdiction.