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The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission voted Tuesday to accept changes to Wyoming’s wolf management plan, even as it acknowledged the gesture likely doesn’t matter when it comes to removing wolves from endangered species protection in the state.

The commission voted on the wolf plan at a meeting in Jackson. It clarifies language that commits Wyoming to maintaining 15 breeding pairs and 150 wolves and restricts the ability to kill wolves in some predator control actions, among other changes.

At the meeting, commissioners also hinted that state lawmakers might need to give up Wyoming’s wolf predator area in the 2009 session in order to be included in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s next delisting effort.

In the predator area, wolves could be killed by anyone at any time by any means and without a license. The predator area includes about 80 percent of the state, excluding the northwest corner.

On July 18, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy granted an injunction stopping the delisting process. In his decision, Molloy cited Wyoming’s predator area as a key factor.

This fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked Molloy to vacate the delisting proposal. Federal officials hope to prepare another delisting plan by the end of the year.

During a public comment period before the Tuesday vote, members of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition both cited the state’s predator area as a potential problem with attempts to delist wolves in Wyoming.

Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, also objected to a section in the new document that gives Wyoming wildlife managers two years to address a decline in the wolf population should the number of breeding pairs drop below eight inside Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.

“The Nov. 16, 2007, plan committed the department to ‘take actions’ in the first year the park wolf population dropped below eight breeding pairs,” Camenzind said in a written statement submitted to the commission. “The additional year before Wyoming is required to take action puts the entire population into jeopardy and is a change that we firmly believe will not hold up to the scrutiny of the delisting requirements.”



A legal battle

Clark Allan, a commissioner from Jackson, said the new management plan is more a legal tool than a management tool. Allan also criticized some environmental groups, which he said have reneged on the original conditions of the wolf introduction.

“This is a legal battle,” he said. “There are groups that ensure that anything we do, we go to the courts. They lose an awful lot of credibility when we are six, eight, 10 times over the goal and they want to go to court. It’s just the dishonesty of the whole thing that bothers me.”

“[Wolves] are overpopulated,” Allan said. “They are destroying their prey base. We’ve got too many dog-gone wolves in too small an area. That’s why they are diseased. That’s why they are destroying their prey base.”

Data show at least one segment of the wolves’ prey base is still strong. At the National Elk Refuge, wildlife managers have met or exceeded the refuge population objective in Wyoming for nine consecutive years, according to the Northern Rockies Wolf Collaborative.

Further, of the seven elk hunting units overlapped by Wyoming’s trophy game area, where wolves could be hunted only with a license during a regulated season, “only two are below herd objectives, and one of these is by 48 animals while the other is about 500 below desired levels,” according to the group.



‘Get it done’

Bill William, a commissioner from Thermopolis, said the people he’s talked to want a conclusion to the wolf issue. He cited the comments of a Casper woman: “She says stop wasting our resources and get it done.”

“I think state management has to be achieved,” he said. “[But] our wolf plan that we vote on probably isn’t going to make a nickle’s worth of difference.”

Commission President Jerry Gallas hinted that legislators might need to consider eliminating the predator area.

“We have to work in harmony with the state legislators and encourage them to change the state wolf plan,” he said. “We cannot sit around and wait for things to improve.”

Bill Rudd, Wyoming Game and Fish assistant division chief for wildlife, said proposals to turn the entire state of Wyoming into a trophy game area will likely be an important part of the delisting discussion.

“That seems to be what a lot of people are telling us,” he said. “I think there is a realization that this may be necessary to move this thing forward.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials called the new draft wolf plan “premature,” arguing that Fish and Wildlife must first finalize new delisting rule and Wyoming legislators must then make changes to Wyoming’s wolf law.

From his office in Montana, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf recovery coordinator Ed Bangs said the state law will have to change.

“We think it is appropriate to be thinking about [the wolf management plan],” he said. “We’ll certainly analyze their thoughts on that as part of looking at public comments [on the delisting proposal].”

Bangs agreed that Wyoming’s predator area will likely become an issue as the delisting process moves forward.

“The predatory animal status has been a lodestone around our neck from the get go,” he said. “It’s alienated the moderate groups. It’s alienated [some scientists]. Certainly the symbolism of predator status alienates most people. Don’t give your opponent a big club and then bitch when they hit you in head.”

Bob Wharff, Wyoming executive director of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, called the new draft “noble” but “misguided.”

“We are continuing to give ground,” he said. “We are selling out the state’s rights to manage wildlife the way the citizens want.”