US pressed to put wolves back on endangered species list
LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Several environmental groups said they filed a legal complaint Monday to force the federal government to put the wolf back on the list of endangered species, claiming some states were allowing indiscriminate killing of the animal.
The US government early last year removed the wolf from the list of endangered species in six US states, after successful recovery and reintroduction programs brought the animal back from the brink of extinction.
Since the protective measure was lifted, management of local wolf populations has reverted to state governments on condition they ensure the species' survival.
However, 12 environmental groups went to federal court in Missoula, Montana, asking that the protective measure be restored in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, where northern Rockies gray wolves "remain threatened by biased, inadequate state management plans."
Defenders of Wildlife said in a statement that Wyoming and Idaho authorities had given their residents a blank check for the "senseless and indiscriminate killing of wolves."
"For example, on the very day delisting took effect -- March 28, 2008 -- Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed into law a new Idaho law allowing Idaho citizens to kill wolves without a permit whenever wolves are annoying, disturbing or 'worrying' livestock or domestic animals," the environmental groups said in another statement.
They added that Wyoming, in turn, "has implemented its 'kill on sight' predator law in nearly 90 percent of the state.
"Not surprisingly, these hostile state laws have resulted in a wave of wolf killings."
Wolves in 1974 almost disappeared as a species in 48 US states -- excluding Alaska and Hawaii -- except for some isolated packs in Minnesota and Michigan.
In 1995, 66 wolves were released by the government in Idaho and in the nearby Yellowstone National Park with the hope they would propagate and multiply.
The program was successful. Currently, an estimated 1,200 wolves roam Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and, to tourists' delight, in Yellowstone's 8,900 square kilometers (3,440 square miles) of parkland.
However, influential farmers in the region opposed to the reintroduction of the predator argue strongly about the financial drain caused by wolf attacks on livestock.
