Wolves at the door: Court ruling triggers backlash over Endangered Species Act
By Tom Steward | Watchdog Minnesota Bureau
Miles Kuschel could have taken aim to protect his cattle from the pack of six gray wolves stalking his herd Easter morning.
Since pulling the trigger meant risking a prison term, he didn’t.
But when Kuschel returned to his farm after Easter services, he found a calf’s bloody carcass.
“They came, they killed and they left, but they’re still around. They just move on to the neighbor’s place,” said Kuschel, president of the Cass County Chapter of the Farm Bureau. Federal wildlife authorities confirmed wolves did indeed kill the 80-pound calf.
Many view the gray wolf’s recovery in the Great Lakes region as one of the Endangered Species Act’s success stories. But to those on the front lines of the wolf’s range, the so-called model program in December became a model of judicial overreach.
ENDANGERED OR NOT? After 3 years of state management, a federal court ordered the gray wolf back on the Endangered Species list in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, raising howls of protest among farmers and other residents.
“Try to put yourself in the farmer’s shoes. It’s literally a federal crime. You could be watching your pasture and you could see a wolf killing your cattle, which is like watching someone at the ATM taking money out of your bank account, and you can do nothing to stop it,” said Charlie Poster, assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.
The state agency has a backlog of more than $50,000 compensation claims due state farmers who lost livestock to wolves.
After three years of state management, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in December made what’s viewed by some as a lone-wolf decision. Gray wolves returned to federal protection in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, the third time since 2003 federal courts have rejected a U.S Fish and Wildlife Service plan to de-list the predator in the Great Lakes region.
“If you have a wolf kill on your farm or ranch, go through the motions that you need to in order to get compensated, but make sure that you send pictures to us,” said Ashley Kohls, executive director of the Minnesota State Cattlemen’s Association. “We’re forwarding them on to people in Washington to our congressman and senators saying, ‘Hey, this is actually happening’ and some of these pictures are pretty graphic.”
Yet environmental groups maintain the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ limited hunting and trapping season endangered the remarkable recovery of what’s also called the timber wolf. The court challenge brought by the Humane Society of the U.S. and others led to reclassification of wolves as threatened in Minnesota and endangered in Michigan and Wisconsin.“Threatened status for wolves nationwide is an ideal compromise solution that provides the FWS (Fish and Wildlife Service) with vastly expanded flexibility to authorize the taking of wolves, while preserving some federal conservation oversight to ensure state actions are FWS-approved and carefully managed,” Christine Coughlin, director of the Minnesota office of the Humane Society of the U.S., says in an email.
The wolf was removed from federal protection in 2012, and Minnesota’s wolf population declined, as anticipated. Hunters and trappers harvested 413 wolves, in addition to a record 295 problem wolves taken by federal wildlife authorities, for depredation control.
That left at least 2,200 wolves in northern Minnesota, well above the 1,250 to 1,400 baseline monitored by Fish and Wildlife. A cutback in DNR hunting and trapping licenses, coupled with fewer problem wolves eliminated, led to a 10 percent increase — to some 2,400 wolves a year later.
“Once the state took it over and allowed some controlled hunting and the ability for us to protect our livestock, it gave the predatory wolves that were bothering us the sense of fear to stay back in the woods and leave the cattle alone. Now, unfortunately, that control is taken away,” said Kuschel.
The federal court ruling remains under appeal, but no one’s waiting around for the courts to reconsider. The National Federation of Wildlife recently passed a resolution criticizing judicial intervention in favor of state control.
“Regional recovery needs to be recognized and result in delisting. We’ll continue to consider all options to advance delisting and to restore state gray wolf management authority,” said Andy Buchsbaum, NWF vice president of conservation action in a news release.
Meantime, two bills in the House of Representatives aim to de-list the timber wolf.
“This bipartisan legislation will remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list and return management to the states, providing greater flexibility and giving states exclusive jurisdiction over the wolves within their own borders,” said Rep. John Kline, a Republican and author of HF 843.
Since mid-March, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services team in Grand Rapids has killed 52 timber wolves.
Federal wildlife agents attribute the increase in cattle depredation to a mild winter and early spring, which placed wolves at a disadvantage against their usual prey — deer. More dead cattle — even dead pets —leads to more hard feelings among locals.
“It’s become kind of a hot button issue. I would say overall there’s increased frustration with wolf management by a lot of the rural people in northern Minnesota, especially those that raise livestock,” said John Hart, district supervisor for the USDA Wildlife Services. “… I think they felt empowered to protect their own property and, right now, they feel a little bit helpless.”
http://watchdog.org/222019/wolves-door-court-ruling-triggers-backlash-endangered-species-act/
