Photo courtesy of xoospot.com

Gray wolves in the greater Yellowstone area of the northern Rocky Mountains, which would have been fair game for hunters in three states as a result of a federal government decision in March, were again put under the protections of the Endangered Species Act by a judge in Montana on Friday.

The action by the judge, Donald W. Molloy of Federal District Court, took the form of a preliminary injunction and could be reversed. But Judge Molloy’s language showed serious reservations about the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove endangered species protections for the wolves.

Environmental groups, including Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, which sued the Interior Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service on behalf of the wolves, persuaded Judge Molloy that there was a possibility of irreparable harm to the species if hunts had been allowed.

The states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming; the National Rifle Association; and a variety of hunting and cattlemen’s associations intervened on the federal government’s behalf.

The judge said the decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service last year to approve Wyoming’s plans for maintaining just eight breeding pairs instead of the 15 the federal government once required was “problematic.” He added that the decision, which ran counter to the federal government’s earlier rejection of the Wyoming plan, “represents an agency change of course unsupported by adequate reasoning.”

Doug Honnold, the lawyer for Earthjustice, said in an e-mail message: “This is great news for wolves. All three states had plans to allow hunts this fall, 500 wolves were scheduled to be killed.” Spokesmen for the Interior Department could not be immediately reached for comment.

Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department said, “Obviously we are disappointed in the decision,” which he said had not yet been fully reviewed. “We’re confident that Wyoming’s wolf management plan is adequate to maintaining a recovered wolf population in the state.”

The fate of wolves has been the subject of bitter litigation since they were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995.

Authored by Felicity Barringer of the NY Times, news broke this morning that Judge Molloy reversed the recent declassification of gray wolves by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  This not only means that hunters will not be able to harvest a sustainable number of wolves this upcoming fall, but more importantly, gray wolves will continue to increase population levels and pose an even greater threat to cut deeper into pockets of western big game herds, especially elk and moose, that live in close proximity to established wolf packs.

I do not post this article as an innocent bystander who is viewing a situation 2,000 miles across the country…  In 2003, I hiked the Bitteroot Mountain Range in western Montana during a 6 day archery elk hunt.  Unbelievably, we saw nearly as many elk killed and left to rot as we did living during the first few days of our hunt.  A pack of wolves had come through the area and on several occasions we could even see where wolf and prey tracks gouged deeply into the high-country roads just hours before we came through. 

Now, I do not think that the situation is as dire and widespread as some radical ‘wolves are worse than Satan’ groups would lead us to believe, but I also think that at 2,000 animals - the species has reached an acceptable level in the West that would now allow hunters to keep wolf numbers at a sustainable level…in turn allowing hammered pockets of elk and moose to rebound. 

It will be interesting to see how Judge Molloy makes his final ruling, but one thing is certain…you better not show up in elk camp this fall with a wolf hide stretched out across your saddlebags.