Wolves: Settlement Agreement Reached On Wolf Recovery (Reprint from the Greater Yellowstone Coalition Summary)
What’s Happening: Wolf management in the Northern Rockies took a step forward Friday, March 18, when a coalition of 10 conservation groups — including GYC — announced a legal settlement with the U.S. Department of the Interior. The agreement was filed in a federal district court in Missoula, where the court reviewed it six days later and will decide soon whether to support it. Read the press release from the 10 groups here, the statement from the Department of the Interior here and find out what it all means in GYC’s detailed fact sheet.
If the court OKs the settlement, wolf management will return to the states of Montana and Idaho. Meanwhile, Endangered Species Act protections will be retained in the states where wolves remain threatened: Wyoming, Oregon, Washington and Utah.
Under the settlement, the Department of the Interior will conduct rigorous scientific monitoring of wolf populations and have independent scientific review from an expert advisory board in three years.
GYC sees the settlement as a workable, science-based solution that will ensure sustainable wolf populations in the Northern Rockies. s. It will enable Montana and Idaho to show they can manage wolves and provide time to work with Wyoming on an acceptable plan.
Nobody has benefited from the ongoing conflict over wolves in the Northern Rockies — least of all wolves. We believe this agreement is in the best short- and long-term interest of people and wolves in the Northern Rockies, not to mention the integrity of the Endangered Species Act.
You can read the settlement agreement here.
The settlement comes on the heels of a 2010 annual report showing the Northern Rockies wolf populations holding steady. A minimum of 1,651 wolves in 244 packs, and 111 breeding pairs roam Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, with 500 wolves calling Greater Yellowstone home. Montana and Wyoming wolf populations grew slowly while Idaho’s showed a slight decline. This is good news for wolves who are proving themselves resilient and adaptable across the region even as the politics surrounding wolf recovery continue to deteriorate.
So far none of the congressional attempts to circumvent the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and strip protections from wolves have moved through Congress. However, the threat still remains. Several bills have been introduced to the 112th Congress ranging from an effort to permanently prohibit listing in the Lower 48 to laws focused strictly on Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
Now more than ever it’s important to work toward a resolution of the wolf controversy that institutes science-based management in the Northern Rockies.
Read about the wolf plans in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. View wolf population trends for these three states here.
The Issue: The return of the gray wolf to the northern Rockies has been one of the greatest conservation success stories and possibly the most controversial. Since the reintroduction in 1995, wolf numbers have steadily increased in the GYE. In 2009, wolves were removed from Endangered Species Act protections in Idaho and Montana, with ESA protections continuing in Wyoming. GYC and several other conservation groups successfully opposed this illegal piecemeal approach to delisting. In August, 2010 a federal court restored Endangered Species Act protections to wolves, canceling fall wolf hunts and triggering a severe political backlash that continues to reverberate in the halls of Congress and the state legislatures.