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| 1/27/2009 11:15:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | President's action shelves wolf delisting for now
State official still hopeful new administration will move to delist
It's been much like watching the ball at a tennis match - back and forth, back and forth.
Last week's announcement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the gray wolf was to be delisted in the Great Lakes and most of the Rocky Mountain regions came to a quick end with the inauguration of President Barack Obama and his order to freeze all pending administrative rules that had not yet been published in the Federal Register.
The president's decision on the freeze added yet another chapter in the efforts to get the wolf off the endangered species list and onto the state's management plan - an effort that has its roots going back to the Clinton Administration.
"This is not just the work of one or two administrations," DNR mammal ecologist and wolf expert Adrian Wydeven said last week after learning about the order from Barack Obama.
Wydeven said that the origins of the effort to delist the wolf began back in 1998 by then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
"Once the population recovered, the effort started," Wydeven said. "It's been 11 years now since then and right now we're not real sure what's going to happen ... nobody seems to know," he said.
While Wydeven said he thought something like the freeze was a possibility, he also said he was hoping the decision to write the administrative rule and get it through was a possibility.
With the announcement to delist made last week by deputy secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett, the Sept. 29, 2008, court decision to place the wolf back on the endangered list was dropped - and like the tennis ball analogy - with the stroke of Obama's pen, the issue was once again hit into the opposite court.
With heads on a swivel, state and local residents have watched as the delisting/placement back on the endangered list has continued.
But Wydeven is still hopeful that common sense will trump political maneuvering.
"I was fearful that something like this might be possible. It's happened before where the incoming administration wants to be sure. Because it is a blanket freezing of the rules, nobody in the [Obama] administration has had the chance to look at the rules [pending from the Bush Administration]," Wydeven said.
"I'm hoping the new administration will go ahead with approval," he said.
In the meantime, Wydeven said the state has already put in an application for a permit to allow the state to deal with problem wolves.
"It will probably take a couple of months to hear [about the application's approval or denial], but if it's approved, it will allow limited [lethal action]," he said.
If approval of the interim permit application is given, Wydeven said the state could move on verified depredations and allow trappers to capture the wolves.
After delisting, the state's management plan would allow both the state and residents to kill troublesome wolves.
Under the state's strict guidelines, after delisting, wolves that are killing livestock or pets could be euthanized or trapped. Under the plan, wolves that openly attack livestock or pets could be shot by landowners - the caveat being that the landowner would have to contact state officials within 24 hours after killing a wolf.
In 2007, 37 wolves that were known to be killing livestock were either trapped or killed by state officials.
The most recent count of wolves in the state, according to Wydeven, estimated that there are between 537-564 wolves in the state - down from the previous year's count of between 540-577.
The count relies on aerial tracking of radio-collared wolves and snow track surveys by DNR and volunteer trackers. Wolf sightings by the members of the public are also considered as part of the count.
There are a total of 143 wolf packs in Wisconsin consisting of at least two adult wolves each. Biologists have found, according to the DNR, that there are 21 packs distributed across central Wisconsin and 122 packs in northern Wisconsin. The largest packs in the state were the Beaver Dam Lake and Shanagolden packs in Ashland County, with seven or eight and eight or nine wolves, respectively.
The Wintergreen Pack in Price County has eight wolves, while at least 33 packs had five or more wolves in each of them.
Had the decision to delist continued without Obama's decision to freeze the rules, it would have been scheduled to take effect 30 days after the publication of two separate rules, one for each population (Western Great Lakes and Rocky Mountain regions), in the Federal Register.
As reported earlier in The Times, the Western Great Lakes population was originally removed from the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife and plants in March 2007, while the Northern Rocky Mountain population was first delisted in February 2008.
Gray wolves were previously listed as endangered in the lower 48 states, except in Minnesota where they were listed as threatened. Wolves in other parts of the 48 states, including the Southwest wolf population, remain endangered and would not be affected by actions taken.
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