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Court Ruling on Wolves Defies Biology

By Patrick DurkinJanuary 26, 2015

LAST UPDATED: May 1st, 2015

By now we expect some absurdity and fantasy in our wolf-management programs, but December’s federal court ruling that returned Great Lakes wolves to the Endangered Species List is likely the silliest decision yet.

In effect, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., declared that although gray wolves aren’t biologically endangered in the Western Great Lakes, they remain legally endangered. In other words, she found reality illegal.

A U.S. district court ruling to return Great Lakes wolves to the Endangered Species List defies biology and could trigger a backlash from Congress.

A U.S. district court ruling to return Great Lakes wolves to the Endangered Species List defies biology and could trigger a backlash from Congress. 

Is nothing easy with wolves? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first removed the Western Great Lakes’ wolf population from the ESL in 2007, but court rulings have since forced the F&WS to restore federal protection four times.

In this most recent dismissal of science, Judge Howell held the F&WS to its original 1978 decision to protect the gray wolf “species” in the entire Lower 48. Therefore, she found that most of the area specified as Western Great Lakes wolf range didn’t offer wolves enough protection.

Some people predict wolf poaching will increase because courts keep defying efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to return wolf-management duties to individual states.

Some people predict wolf poaching will increase because courts keep defying efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to return wolf-management duties to individual states.

 

Specifically, Howell cited Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, North and South Dakota, and two-thirds of Minnesota as unsafe for wolves. No matter that those states and most of Minnesota lie outside the region’s best wolf habitat – northeastern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – which wolves recolonized the past 30 years.

Basically, Judge Howell said it’s not enough that Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan have healthy wolf populations in their Northern forests. By her interpretation, the states still haven’t done enough to meet the Endangered Species Act’s legal requirements. She noted that wolves sometimes wander far from their birth range, and state laws do little to protect them.

It’s possible that the U.S. Congress might have to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species List to let state wildlife agencies manage the species.

It’s possible that the U.S. Congress might have to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species List to let state wildlife agencies manage the species.

She also said Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan are “deficient” in addressing the possibility that disease and illegal kills could interact with each other and threaten the species.

Sigh. Are we really supposed to write laws to protect individual animals or entire species from every eventuality? We can’t even do that for ourselves.

“The wolf is neither a saint nor a sinner except to those who want to make it so.” – David Mech, U.S. Geological Survey, Minnesota

“The wolf is neither a saint nor a sinner except to those who want to make it so.” – David Mech, U.S. Geological Survey, Minnesota

And at what point do we just end all funding for other “endangered” species and put everything into wolves to meet judicial edicts? Should we consider suing the F&WS to restore bison, moose, cougars and woodland caribou across their native range, too?

Of course not. Most of us realize those wildlife species can’t live in our urban and agricultural shadows any more than wolves can. At least that’s what wolf experts like Dave Mech of the U.S. Geological Survey in Minnesota keep saying.

Speaking in a recent conference call by the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minn., Mech said some wolves might leave Minnesota and eventually set roots in parts of North Dakota and South Dakota, but beyond that? Forget it.

“I don’t think for a minute that wolves are going to repopulate Iowa or Indiana or Illinois because people just won’t let them,” Mech said. For example, wolves from the region have occasionally been shot or road-killed in states from Kentucky to New York.

And that shouldn’t surprise us. Wolves often do the unexpected. But they remain mortal, no matter how much some folks mythologize them. As Mech has written: “The wolf is neither a saint nor a sinner except to those who want to make it so.”

We see examples of the wolf’s fabled influence in reactions to Howell’s ruling. Without bothering to read the ruling, some wolf worshipers declared that hunters and trappers “brought this on themselves” by hunting and trapping wolves, and pursuing them with hounds in Wisconsin.

Granted, Wisconsin lawmakers and the state’s Department of Natural Resources did not – and do not – work with wolf advocates, or even listen to their concerns. But nowhere in Howell’s decision did she mention Wisconsin’s hunting and trapping seasons to justify her stance. She did, however, fault Minnesota for being too lax in protecting wolves in its wolf Zone B, which covers two-thirds of the state and holds little suitable wolf habitat.

Unfortunately, Howell’s ruling could have unintended consequences, such as turning wolves into symbols of outside interference and overreaching government. Poaching could increase if locals think the federal government favors wolf interests over theirs. In contrast, new research by Erik Olson at UW-Madison found that illegal behavior could be moderated with “responsible and effective wildlife management programs,” which includes regulated hunting and trapping.

Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if Howell’s decision so infuriates lawmakers that Congress passes legislation to remove wolves from the Endangers Species Act nationwide. After all, Congress delisted wolves in Idaho and Montana in April 2011 after similar court rulings.

Some might call that an end-around, but others say it’s simply Congress’s way of clarifying what it originally intended when creating the ESA in 1973: to restore endangered populations and return their management to individual states.

Of course, if Congress must again go to such troubles to legalize reality, let’s hope they stop there. Otherwise, instead of celebrating the wolf’s recovery from near-extinction in the Western Great Lakes, we might be discussing whether Howell’s ruling triggered the gutting of the Endangered Species Act itself.

No animal besides the wolf could inspire such an emotional, yet realistic, possibility

Patrick Durkin
President at Wisconsin Outdoor Communicators Association
Patrick Durkin is a lifelong bowhunter and full-time freelance outdoor writer/editor who lives in Waupaca, Wisconsin. He has covered hunting, fishing and outdoor issues since 1983. His work appears regularly in national hunting publications, and his weekly outdoors column has appeared regularly in over 20 Wisconsin newspapers since 1984.
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