Wolf massacre expected...again

The Nez Perce word for wolf is "he’me," meaning "big brother"

Sometime this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), an agency of the Department of the Interior, is expected to release a proposal to strip gray wolves of crucial Endangered Species Act protections across most of Wyoming and to also prematurely delist wolves in Idaho--where the state is poised to kill up to 75% of the wolves living in the Lolo district of the Clearwater National Forest. Under the original FWS stipulation, gray wolves living in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming were to be treated as one population to ensure their long-term survival, even after they had biologically recovered according to the criteria of the Endangered Species Act. Therefore, the plan was to only delist the species after all three states had submitted acceptable wolf management plans. Though Wyoming has not yet proposed how they would manage the wolves in their territory, the FWS is now considering delisting the species in Idaho and Montana anyway.

Why the change from the original plan? In a word, Bush.

Last year President Bush nominated, and the Senate confirmed, former Idaho governor Dirk Kempthorne, a pro-development Republican, as Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior (replacing ethically-challenged Gale A. Norton). Kempthorne has such an abysmal environmental record as a senator and a governor that the National Resources Dense Council labeled him a "Gale Norton in pants."

Here's an sample of Kempthorne's views from an Endangered Species Coalition report:

Opposes recovery of Endangered wolves
As governor, Kempthorne signed a memorial asking the U.S. Department of Interior to remove all wolves from Idaho, and calling for the eradication of wolves in Idaho "by any means necessary," and claiming that recovery of imperiled wolves and grizzly bears “has no basis in common sense, legitimate science, or free-enterprise economics.”[3] Days after signing an agreement to shift federal management of the Endangered wolf to the state of Idaho, Kempthorne released a plan to exterminate 75% of the wolves in some packs. Kempthorne blamed the endangered wolves for a decline in the elk populations, but the elk had been declining in those areas since before wolves had been reintroduced, and biologists stated that the available habitat couldn’t support increased elk herds.

The FWS proposal could allow the use of aerial gunning and other lethal control methods to kill as many as two-thirds of the wolves in Wyoming and as many as 54 of Idaho's 65 wolf packs--regardless of the wolves’ history of interaction with humans and livestock. If the FWS is not prevented from issuing this proposal, this could become the worst wolf massacre to occur in the lower 48 states in decades.

Despite Kempthorne, if enough of us object to this proposal we may may be able to save some of these wolves, at least for now. Please call the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mr. Dale Hall, and Mr. Kempthorne and urge them both to maintain federal protections for gray wolves:

Mr. Dale Hall, Director
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20240
1-800-344-9453

Mr. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
1-202-208-3100

The Defenders of Wildlife also have a convenient website where you can send this appeal to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.