Keeping the Wolves at Bay

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 2, 2000 | by Sean Paige

There may be good news on the horizon for Little Red Riding Hood. Thanks to a rare moment of clarity, federal wildlife officials reportedly are mulling a pause in their gray-wolf reintroduction efforts in parts of the Rocky Mountains, leaving one less thing for people to worry over during walks through the woods, whether to grandmother's house or elsewhere.

Four years ago, at the start of the controversial program, officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hoped to reintroduce 30 pairs of wolves to the Northern Rockies. But today, with more than 100 wolves living in Yellowstone National Park, officials apparently believe that that number will not only provide enough of a base population to ensure the wolf's recovery across the entire interior West from Washington state to New Mexico, but may also justify removal of the animal from the endangered-species list in the next three or four years.

The news may come as a relief to Western ranchers, who worry about federally introduced wolf packs preying on their herds. "Obviously, we have some very serious concerns about wolves," a spokeswoman for the Colorado Cattlemen's Association told the Associated Press. But that angers environmentalists, some of whom apparently won't be happy until the wolves are at the door -- literally. "They've set exceedingly low recovery goals [for the wolf] because they don't want to ruffle too many people's feathers," one Western wolf advocate said of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

But federal willingness to take local sentiment into account when making management decisions is a seen as a welcome development to many Westerners, who've grown tired of Washington's high-handed ways in managing supposedly "public" lands. Ed Bangs, who manages the wolf-recovery program, said the Rockies could support many more of the animals, but that the Endangered Species Act, while intended to prevent extinctions, "is not supposed to put animals everywhere they once were."

Public hearings will he held on the plan in October, with a final ruling on the wolf reintroductions due next summer.