Salazar Continuing with Bush Admin Plan to Delist the Wolves

Remember how I expressed not a whole lot of fondness for Secretary of the Interior Salazar a few days ago, when talking about Endangered Species Act protections? Yeah. Well, if hunters and cattle ranchers needed another reason to love him, and I needed another reason to not, we got it yesterday. Salazar has approved the Bush administration plan to remove Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in Montana, Idaho, the western Great Lakes, and portions of Oregon, Washington, and Utah. Straight from a Defenders of Wildlife newsletter yesterday:

I have some terrible news. Today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that he would follow the discredited path of the Bush Administration and delist wolves in the Northern Rockies and Greater Yellowstone region.

This is a stunning development, just six weeks into the Obama Administration. This delisting paves the way for almost 1000 wolves to be killed under deadly state management plans in Idaho and Montana.

The killing could begin in just weeks. . . .

This delisting will put the fate of our wolves in the hands of state governments that want to slaughter nearly 1,000 wolves. Last year, when federal wolf protections were temporarily lifted in the region, more than 100 wolves were killed in just a short time -- including the world renowned “Limpy.”

In addition, regular wolf hunting seasons could begin as early as this fall in Idaho and Montana -- and Idaho Governor “Butch” Otter said again today that he still wants the first available hunting tag to shoot a wolf himself. . . .

We can’t allow the out-of-control killing of wolves to happen again. . . .

Just this week, we celebrated a hard-fought victory made possible with your help as the Senate voted to overturn the Bush Administration's last-minute gutting of the Endangered Species Act. We now need to beat back another deadly Bush-era plan that will open the door to the slaughter of nearly 1,000 wolves.

The Center for Biological Diversity has this to say:

“Today’s announcement means wolves will lose their federal protections before recovery is complete,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “And, as we saw last year before a federal judge reversed a Bush administration delisting rule, that will result in an unconstrained and unconscionable slaughter of these animals.”

“It is disappointing that the Obama administration is choosing to follow a bad Bush policy to piecemeal wolf conservation efforts instead of prioritizing the development of a national wolf recovery plan.”

Wolves once roamed most of the continental United States, but today survive in a small fraction of their historic range. With today’s move, wolves will lose protection in most of their remaining range, seriously undermining efforts to conserve wolves in portions of their historic range where they no longer occur.

“Wolves play a vital role in the ecosystems in which they occur,” said Robinson. “It’s a shame that the agency has abandoned a larger recovery effort to the many places, such as the Northeastern United States, southern Rockies, Pacific Northwest and Sierra Nevada, where wolves could survive.”

Even in the northern Rockies and Great Lakes where numbers of wolves have substantially increased, it is questionable whether they are fully recovered. Wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains number fewer than 200 breeding animals, far below the thousands that independent biologists have determined are necessary to avoid long-term genetic problems and decline, and the state of Idaho plans to kill many of the wolves in their state. Likewise, state plans in the Great Lakes states will allow killing of many wolves, even as disease is resulting in loss of many wolf pups. The severity of these threats suggests that wolves will not see any further recovery. Worse still, Fish and Wildlife was forced to retain protection for wolves in Wyoming because the state refused to provide sufficient protection.

No one is giving up yet though, and Defenders of Wildlife is asking for donations to help them mount an emergency legal challenge. If you can contribute to the group's effort to stop the killing, go here.