Throwing Canis Lupus to the wolves: United States v. McKittrick and the existence of the Yellowstone and Central Idaho experimental wolf populations under a flawed provision of the...

Brigham Young University Law Review, 2000 by Dinger, Daniel R

The massacre of wolves in the United States began as the numbers of farms and ranches-and the livestock housed on and around them-increased with America's nineteenth century expansion to the West.36 An early method of killing wolves, employed in great earnest in the northern Rocky Mountain area, was to shoot bison and poison the abandoned carcasses, which wolves would consume; between 1870 and 1877, approximately 385,000 wolves were killed by this method.37 In 1883, Montana became the first territory to offer a bounty for the killing of any predator, including wolves; between 1883 and 1918, approximately 80,730 wolves were killed for bounty in Montana, and by 1926 wolves were reportedly eliminated from the state all together.38 A similar program was enacted in Idaho in the early 1900s with similar results.39 Even in Yellowstone National Park, where wild animals were supposed to be protected, the killing of wolves by none other than park officials continued until 1926.,40 As a result of these and other nationwide efforts, the wolf was gone from the majority of the eastern United States by 1900, and by 1926 it was gone from the Great Plains.41 Washington State finished off its wolves by 1940, and Colorado and Wyoming finished off theirs by 1943.,42 By the middle of the twentieth century, the wolf had been completely eradicated from almost ninety-five percent of its original habitat within the borders of the contiguous forty-eight states.43 Only in Canada and Alaska has the Rocky Mountain gray wolf continued to thrive.44

B. The Endangered Species Act of 1973

In December of 1973, the decimated wolf populations in the United States wan a major victory when Congress enacted the Endangered Species Conservation Act (ESA) in response to general concern over the depletion and possible extinction of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States.45 The stated purpose of the Act is "to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, to provide a program for the conservation of such . . . species, and to take such steps as may be appropriate to achieve the purposes of the treaties and conventions set forth in [the Act.]"46 In firther defining the scope of the Act, in 1978 the United States Supreme Court held that the Act's essential purpose is to conserve endangered species at any cost.47

The ESA defines an endangered species as one "which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range."48 A threatened species is one "which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable fixture throughout all or a significant portion of its range."49 Significant protections are afforded those species which the Act lists as endangered or threatened.50

The northern Rocky Mountain Wolf ( canis lupus irremotus), a major target and victim of the late-1800s' wolf massacres, was listed in the original act as an endangered species, and as such was given full protection under the ESA.51 In 1978, the entire species of canis lupus was listed as endangered in each of the forty-eight contiguous states except for Minnesota, the state with the largest wolf population, where it was listed only as threatened. 52