I don't know why we even talk about the USFW in referance with the wolf reintroductin in Wa. or anywhere else for that matter. They took the check. the evironmentalisys are running the show. The USFW and the forest service of today just got offered a better pay check. I wish that I would have come to this forum along time ago for help, when I first started fighting what was happening, you folks could have helped me a great deal. I just never thought of it. I was to bizzy trying to prove to the other half the sh-t we were going to be in shortly. Now we are in it, and there are plenty of people that know it. All of your Ideas bouncing around off each other, if you go back and read through all of it slowly it pops up answers. The game department in Wyoming don't like this wolf bullsh-t anymore than we do, but they don't run along the same trails that we do. They have more range land for cattle, same with Montana, with Idaho, it was just the fed fleking there strength. showing the people what they could do. Arragant sh-tstains. All this time I have been thinking maybe the feds would like to get shed of the wolf program, but no that would be the end of big pay check. Same with the forest service, which use to run on mostly timber money, but since the spotted owl issue shut that all down, now it is the wolf. which takes everything back to the environmentalists. Brings a whole differant light in on the subject. You know there is a tourust season, how about an environmentalist season, now theres a thought. So how does one fight an organization that big? public awareness.
Posted 7/16/2004 6:46 PM
U.S. seeks end to gray wolf protection
FOREST LAKE, Minn. (AP) The gray wolf has made such a strong comeback that it should be removed from federal protection from Maine to the Dakotas, Interior Secretary Gail Norton said Friday.
The rebounding gray wolf population has federal authorities set to lift protections under the Endangered Species Act.
By Dawn Villella, AP
"This is a moment in which we can take great pride in achievement, both of people and in nature," Norton said at a wildlife science center in front of a pen containing six wolves, which watched their human audience with some curiosity.
Norton announced a proposed rule that would lift protection under the Endangered Species Act for gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan where the population has grown to 3,200 animals as well as in at least 20 other states. The proposal calls for states to assume management of the gray wolf populations in those states.
The gray wolf nearly disappeared in the lower 48 states in the 1950s.
The rule change includes New England, where conservationists fear that loss of federal protection would hurt attempts to develop future wolf populations through migrations from Canada.
Norton said Friday marked the start of a four-month public comment period on the rule. Public meetings will be held across the region, and Norton said to expect her department to issue its final rule late this year or early next year. Norton said she expects environmental groups will sue to block the change.
The Endangered Species Act is managed by Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Norton was to travel later Friday to a wildlife sanctuary in Wisconsin where the wolves have been on the rebound as well. Minnesota has the largest population of gray wolves also known as timber wolves in the United States outside of Alaska, where the animal has never needed protection.
Conservationists acknowledged that the revival of the gray wolf in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan is a tale of ecological success.
But they called the Interior proposal shortsighted because it also removes all protection for the wolf in New England where especially in Maine there has been hope the wolf population would re-emerge, migrating in from Canada.
"Wolf recovery in the Great Lakes represents a tremendous wildlife success story," said Larry Schwieger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. "But the Fish and Wildlife Service should not abandon efforts to recover the wolf in the Northeast."
Interior Department spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said that under the proposed rule in regions such as New England it would be up to the states to try to reintroduce gray wolves if they desire future populations.
Last year, the Interior Department upgraded the wolf from endangered to threatened everywhere in the lower 48 states except for the Southwest, where a subspecies, known as the Mexican gray wolf, has been struggling to recover.
The latest action for the time being would continue the "threatened" designation for gray wolves across the West including in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana where wolves were reintroduced in the mid-1990s under a federal program at Yellowstone National Park. The wolf would remain endangered in the Southwest.
Virtually extinct in the lower 48 states some 40 years ago, today there are more than 2,450 wolves in Minnesota and nearly 800 in Wisconsin and Michigan. The reintroduction program at Yellowstone has produced hundreds of the wolves in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
Historically, the gray wolf's range stretched from Canada to Mexico including most of the United States.
Although the gray wolf is still limited to less than 5% of its original range, the recovery program has been compared to the successful revival under the Endangered Species Act of the bald eagle, the American alligator and peregrine falcon.
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