Feds close to wolf decision

Lawmakers are taking sides in the debate over federal protections for wolves as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service nears a decision on the controversial predator.

Twice this month members of Congress have put their pens to letters addressed to USFWS Director Dan Ashe, one asking the USFWS to preserve protections for wolves, the other saying it’s time to drop wolves from the Endangered Species List completely.

“Wolves are not an endangered species and do not merit federal protections,” reads the March 22 letter, signed by 66 Republicans and six Democratsled by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.

The letter comes as a retort to a March 4 letter by U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, and U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts. Fifty-one Democrats and one Republican signed the DeFazio-Markey letter. They argued that wolves have only just begun returning to portions of the Pacific Northwest, California and the Southern Rocky Mountains.

“It is our hope that you will retain Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in these areas,” DeFazio wrote. “A blanket national delisting of the gray wolf would be premature and would not be grounded in peer reviewed science.”

Of Oregon’s congressional delegation, DeFazio and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, weighed in with a letter to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Neither Sens. Ron Wyden nor Jeff Merkley, both D-Ore., nor Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, added their names to either letter.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is currently looking at the status of wolves across the U.S., said Joan Jewett, USFWS spokeswoman in Portland.

“Sometime in the next few months we’ll be completing the status review,” she said.

State-sponsored hunts helped bring an end to wolves in Oregon by the 1940s, but they began their reemergence last decade. The wolves moved into northeast Oregon from Idaho, where the USFWS reintroduced wolves in the 1990s.

Six wolf packs are known to inhabit the state, likely with more than 46 individual animals, said Michelle Dennehy, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, in an email. While the wolf packs have been limited to Eastern Oregon so far, at least some lone wolves have started to explore other parts of the state and beyond.

In 2011, two separate wolves tracked by the state — OR-3 and OR-7 — left the Imnaha pack. While OR-3 hasn’t been tracked since September 2011 near Prineville, OR-7 garnered fame as he rambled through Central Oregon and into California. There he was the first wolf known to be in the state since 1924. Earlier this month OR-7 moved back into Oregon; Dennehy said he was last tracked Monday in Jackson County.

While many conservation groups have welcomed the return of wolves to Oregon, the livestock industry argues for keeping wolves away from their livelihoods.

Kay Teisl, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association in Salem, said plenty of wolves already live in Oregon and they no longer warrant federal protection.

“If we are not going to delist now, when are we going to delist?” she said. “…Do we have to have wolves in every county in Oregon before they are not considered listed any more?”

Nick Cady, legal director for Cascadia Wildlands in Eugene, said now is too soon to consider lifting federal protections for wolves.

“They are clearly not established,” he said.

Wolves in the West

The wolves in Oregon are considered to be Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced to the West in the mid-1990s. A look at the history of the wolves, and wolves in Oregon:

1973: The Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf subspecies is added by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the federal endangered species list.

1978: Fish and Wildlife Service lists gray wolf throughout the lower 48 states, replacing the subspecies listing.

1980: Fish and Wildlife Service completes recovery plan for Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves.

1987: Fish and Wildlife Service revises Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf recovery plan, establishing the plan to reintroduce wolves to parts of Idaho and Yellowstone National Park.

1994: Experimental population rules finalized, allowing the reintroduction of wolves from Canada into central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park.

1995: Federal wildlife managers reintroduce wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone National Park.

1999: Radio-collared wolf captured near John Day and returned to Idaho.

2000: Dead radio-collared wolf found along Interstate 84 south of Baker City; dead wolf found shot between Ukiah and Pendleton. Both wolves were from Idaho.

2002: Northern Rocky Mountain wolf recovery goals first met.

2005: Oregon releases wolf management plan, detailing how to handle the re-emergence of wolves.

2007: Dead wolf found shot in Union County.

2008: Radio-collared wolf enters Eastern Oregon from Idaho; she eventually becomes the matriarch of one of Oregon’s new packs.

2003-2009: Fish and Wildlife Service once reclassifies and twice delists all or part of the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf population. The rules are overturned by various U.S. District Courts following lawsuits by environmental groups.

2011: The U.S. Congress reinstitutes the 2009 rule delisting Northern Rocky Mountain wolves except in Wyoming, resulting in the federal wolf delisting boundary in Oregon. Wolves east of the boundary are no longer federally protected while wolves west of the boundary are federally protected. Wolves on both sides of the boundary are protected by the state.

2011: OR-3, a radio-collared wolf from Eastern Oregon, is tracked near Prineville in September. OR-3 hasn’t been located since. OR-7, another radio-collared wolf from Eastern Oregon, passes through Central Oregon on his way to becoming the first wolf in California in nearly 90 years.

2013: OR-7 returns to Oregon earlier this month and was in Jackson County as of Monday.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife