Ag, sportsmen’s groups join wolf suit

By The Standard Staff - 05/14/2008

A coalition of agriculture and sportsmen’s groups has joined in the legal effort to keep wolves under state control by blocking environmental groups’ lawsuit to have them put back on the Endangered Species List.

The groups said in a press release that if wolves are again given federal protection, they would cause irreparable harm to farmers and ranchers and sportsmen by eating livestock and wild game.

“Anyone who has hunted elk in southwestern Montana knows that our elk there are being ravaged by wolves,” Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, said in a press release. “It’s high time the courts heard from Montana people about wolves.” The groups — which also included the Montana Stockgrowers Association, Montana Farm Bureau, Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd and the Western Montana Fish and Game Association — filed a motion in Helena federal court to intervene in a federal lawsuit being defended by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wolves in the northern Rockies were taken off the ESA in February and handed over to the management of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. They have spread out since 66 wolves were released in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1996.

Biologists now estimate that more than 1,500 wolves roam the three states. They are classified as predators in most of Wyoming outside Yellowstone and can be shot year round, while Montana and Idaho have fall hunts planned for the large carnivores.

But last month 11 environmental groups joined together and sued to have wolves returned to the ESA and federal control. They claim in court records that the state plans in place won’t guarantee that too many wolves will be killed.

The groups said under state proposals wolves could be taken down to numbers that wouldn’t guarantee enough genetic diversity to keep the population healthy. They said the state’s need more wolves than are already here. They filed a request for an injunction to halt the killing of wolves until their case is resolved.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is defending the decision to delist wolves in court. In addition, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks has entered the legal fray in defense of delisting.

— Compiled by Standard staff