Los Angeles Times: Federal rule to allow more hunting of gray wolves

From the Los Angeles Times

Federal rule to allow more

hunting of gray wolves

The loosening of restrictions is a ’safety valve’ for states, in anticipation of a legal fight over delisting the species as endangered.

By Tami Abdollah
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 25, 2008

State game agencies and private citizens would be allowed to kill federally protected gray wolves that threatened dogs or seriously decreased deer, elk or moose populations in parts of the northern Rocky Mountains, under a federal rule announced Thursday.

The regulation comes a month ahead of the expected federal decision to take the gray wolf off the endangered species list, which would allow wolves to be hunted. That decision is likely to face protracted litigation.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services officials said Thursday that the revised provision would allow for states to deal with areas where wolf activity is affecting wildlife populations while delisting is tied up in court.

“This rule, if it goes forward, could provide a safety valve for the states during the two to three years while the delisting goes through litigation,” said Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife’s wolf recovery coordinator. “Whether this rule ever gets used or not, who knows. But if you’re protecting your dog on a Forest Service hiking trail, you’ll be glad this rule exists.”

Environmentalists interpreted the rule as an attempt to skirt delays expected from delisting litigation.

“The shame of it is we spent so much time and effort trying to recover wolves, and were within spitting distance of recovery,” said Doug Honnold, managing attorney for the Northern Rockies office of Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm. “But instead of securing those recovery gains and building on them, Fish and Wildlife Services is throwing them away. . . . They want the right to kill wolves willy-nilly.”

Honnold said he would file suit and seek an injunction against the rule on behalf of environmental organizations including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Once ranging from central Mexico to the Arctic, gray wolves were killed off for decades, and their population had virtually disappeared from the American West by the 1930s. They were listed as endangered in 1974.

Since they were reintroduced to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996, their population has spread throughout the northern Rockies region, swelling to more than 1,500, and it’s growing by about 24% annually, according to wildlife officials.

The rule issued Thursday relies on a revision of endangered-species regulations that allows lethal force against “nonessential experimental populations” like the gray wolf under certain circumstances. The section was created as a compromise with ranchers who were worried about a growing wolf population preying on livestock. Thursday’s revision was the third change to the gray-wolf-reintroduction rule since it was written in 1994.

Currently, gray wolves cannot be killed unless they are preying on livestock or on a dog on private property, or are the main culprit behind dwindling populations of animals such as deer, elk and moose.

The rule change issued Thursday would ease the burden of proof to justify a wolf kill. State agencies would only need to show that wolf predation had been one factor among others for a decreasing population of ungulates, such as elk, deer or moose. A wolf threatening a dog also could be killed. None of the rule provisions apply to wolves within national parks or outside central Idaho and the greater Yellowstone area.

A state agency that wants to kill wolves preying on ungulate populations would have to file a lengthy wolf management plan with Fish and Wildlife. Officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana said they had no immediate plan to do so.

“The state of Idaho is more interested in delisting than in changes to [this] rule, which is kind of a stopgap, or an interim measure . . . should delisting be delayed,” said Steve Nadeau, an Idaho Fish and Game official who oversees the state’s wolf program. “We have no plan to use [the rule] unless wolves are not delisted anytime soon.”

The new rule is scheduled to take effect in about a month, around the time the delisting decision is to be announced.

Bangs, who helped lead the reintroduction of gray wolves when the tri-state area had about 10 wolves, said that most elk and other hoofed big-game animal populations were not greatly affected by wolves and that more wolves — about 150 annually — probably would be killed for preying on livestock.

“This is absolutely not a get-out-of-jail-free card for wolf killing,” Bangs said. “This is a highly structured scientific-based process to address real problems. . . . It won’t change the [overall] number of wolves, but it will change distribution and in a few areas the number of wolves.”

Last January, Republican Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter incensed environmentalists when he told a group of hunters on the Idaho statehouse steps that he wanted to be the first to sign up to kill wolves once they were delisted.

tami.abdollah@latimes.com

One of my oldest friends, in life not chronologically just turned 39.  Seriously she’s 39 years old, not that 39 and holding everyone says they are when they don’t want to admit they’re really 47.  It’s hard to believe my friends are officially in their late 30’s.  That would mean I’m right behind them.  When my parents were 40 years old they were SO old.  I don’t feel nearly as old as they were that’s for sure, I bet my nieces and nephew think I am though…

Anyway, so my friend T turned 39 a couple of weeks ago, she lives about an hour out of town and is coming up Saturday to stay the night and go out to celebrate.  We are trying something new.  Normally we do the normal club thing.  Dancing, drinking (with a designated driver of course) so on and so forth.  This time we are going to try a place called Tasso’s.  It’s a Greek restaurant that promises great food and entertainment.  Live music, belly dancing and even an opportunity to break some plates for good luck.  We’re even supposed to try a drink called Ouzo.  If anyone knows what that consists of or anything about it, please let me know.  The way I figure is it rhymes with boozo, so it can’t be all that bad. Ha!

So, my posse and I are headed out Saturday night.  If anyone has any recommendations for dinner at this fabulous Greek restaurant, I’m open to that as well.  The most I know about Grecian food is a Gyro sandwich at the Mall food court.  Yes, you bet-I do have a well traveled palate. 

A few years ago my niece received a doll as a gift.  This was yet one more baby doll to add to her collection.  Something was special about this one though and she was in love!  She promptly named the baby Sally and they were inseparable.                             

My niece turned 8 in November and several weeks prior I began asking her what she wanted as a gift.  She repeatedly told me she wanted a ‘twin for Sally’.  A twin for Sally?  Oh boy.  I’ll admit, I’m a bad Aunt, I couldn’t say I’d paid enough attention to Sally to be able to purchase her a twin.  Uh Oh.  So I let it the idea go for a little while until I couldn’t think of anything else to get her and I was wondering aimlessly though the isles at Wal-Mart I called my brother.  He said she wanted this new Electronic Monopoly game.  I tried to put up an argument explaining that she wanted a twin for Sally, but he told me ‘A’ would be outgrowing dolls soon and besides they already had enough paraphernalia around the house.  He assured me she would love the Monopoly game.

We met on her birthday and she opened the her present and being the beautiful girl that she is, she did love her Monopoly game.  Hugs and kisses were given, smiles were shown.  All was good. 

‘A’ is either fortunate or unfortunate enough to have Christmas come only a month after her birthday.  So, a couple of weeks later I quizzed her again.  What do you want for Christmas?  I didn’t even have the question out of my mouth when she said, “A twin for Sally”…Here we go again!  Next time I saw my brother, he got the punch on the arm and the stern look that meant to be interpreted as ‘what kind of Dad are you anyway, depriving you daughter of the one thing she really wants?” He told me he and his wife had already looked everywhere and they couldn’t find that doll.  It was a lost cause.  A few days go by and I have the opportunity to visit A’s classroom.  Displayed proudly on the wall were all the kid’s letters to Santa.  The only thing she asked for was…you guessed it.  A twin.  Not a video game, not a bike, not anything outrageously expensive, just a twin for her little ol’ doll.  Well, now I had to find that silly thing.  It was too late to ebay it, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.  I made my brother take a picture of the doll so that if I had to, I would comb every store in the city to find it.

Thanks to my sister and Google, I wouldn’t need to do any of that.  My sister is an avid scrapper (that’s what the scrapbookers call themselves), she has pictures of A from every birthday and Christmas since she was born I think, and they are organized meticulously.  She was able with in a couple of minutes to put her hand on a picture of her unwrapping Sally all those years ago and she was able to see who the manufacturer was.  I Googled the manufacturer and within 10 minutes I knew that my local Target store had Sally’s twin. (Thanks sis!)

I grabbed a friend of mine and two days before Christmas we made the journey to Target.  Ugh!  We found the twin though.  However, Sally’s twin could talk, eat, sleep, and came with a bed, high chair and stroller!  Holy Cow!  I mentioned to my friend that Sally didn’t do any of these things.  She said, well you know…one twin is always smarter than the other. 

Christmas Eve came and my sister was the only one in the family who knew ‘A’ was getting what she’d been asking for.  I told my brother I couldn’t find the doll.  I guess you could say my niece was a little excited when she opened the present-

As an Aunt, many times I get the gifts completely wrong.  They end up in the land of lost toys.  It’s nice when you get it right once in a while.  Even if, like in this case, they have to completely spell it out for you.

My entire life my family spent our summers and most weekends in the winters at the lake.  When I was 15 my brother and sister were old enough to stay home and work, leaving me at our lake house alone all summer with my folks.  My parents always told me one day I would miss times like that where I would have the freedom to spend that much time down there.  Of course I didn’t believe them-parents of 15 year olds are never right!  Well, not until the 15 year old becomes a 30 year old.

That summer, became bearable when I found out one of my closest friends from Jr. High now lived in the same town.  The same town where the two most exciting things to do were A)Go to the single screen movie theatre, or B) Go to the skating rink.  We chose the skating rink.  (as a side note, when this rink first opened, my brother and I used to take our OWN music there to be played because the city was so much more progressive than the lake.  Can you believe they didn’t have Queen??)

The first night at the rink this really cute red headed boy came and asked me to couple skate (ahhh, couple skate -pardon me while I swoon).  So we did, and we did it again, and then we were interpretable for the rest of the night.  As it turned out, this very cute redhead went to the same school and knew my friend.  The three of us hung out a couple of times, and then the three became two, he and I.  I really couldn’t have picked a better boy for my first boyfriend.  It was almost storybook.  We skated, we went to the movies, we even went to the county fair for Pete’s sake.  Almost sickening-I know.  Summer ended, we wrote to one another but he was 17 and with me only being 15, I didn’t have maturity needed to allow it continue.

The next time I heard from him he was in Cuba.  He had just finished basic training and he was in the Navy.  We wrote back and forth but weren’t consistent about it.  Some time ago when Classmates.com became all the rage I thought to look him up.  His bio said he was on the Stennis in San Diego.  I shot him an email with no expectations.  Much to my surprise I got one back almost immediately.  He was indeed still in the Navy and in fact about to be promoted to Chief. 

I pleased to say the redhead and I have stayed close friends ever since.  He’s now stationed in Virginia Beach.  Hopefully soon to be promoted to Senior Chief.    I received an email from him yesterday.  The email told me he had good news and bad news for me.  He would tell me the bad news first so that the good would cheer me up.  His bad news was that he was being deployed for a year to Iraq.  I was so stunned by the news I could hardly take in the good news.  That which was that he had just saved a ton of money by switching to Geico.  Yeah thanks!  This is his sense of humor.  I really thought at my age I was done having to worry about my friends being sent to Iraq.  I know sadly, I will soon have to worry about my friends kids being in Iraq, but never thought I would still have to worry about my friends.  I started with my million questions.  When are you leaving, why are you leaving, what the hell did you volunteer for, and what ship will you be on?

This is where my disbelief took an even deeper spiral turn south.  He told me he wasn’t going to be on a ship, for the year he was going to be deployed he would be considered part of the Army.  WTF?  You mean on the ground?  I really thought he was trying to pull one over on me.  No, he was completely serious.  Just before shipping out he would be issued Army fatigues that he would wear for the entire time he would be in Iraq.  I don’t even know how many times I asked him to repeat himself.  I just couldn’t, and still can’t wrap my brain around this idea.  I argued that he’s not ground trained how can the government do this?  He said it wasn’t a new idea; we already had over 10,000 Navy persons on the ground as part of the Army right now.

So, the trip I had planned for June to Virginia Beach/Norfolk has now been moved up to February.  I knew he was leaving in September, it was just supposed to be for a presumably benign 9 month ocean tour.  I wanted to see where he worked and the base and Virginia Beach before his tour.  Now the trip will have a very different feel.  

He’s told me I can come on the ship with him.  I know I will, although I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle it.  I don’t anticipate having claustrophobic issues, I wonder with my feelings on this entire political issue if my incredibly sad emotions will take over once the look of the active military will be there slapping me in the face.  Only time will tell, I suppose…  Only time will tell.

It looks like I learned how to load my photos in here.  Yeah me!  Well, with the help of Picasa.  Really, what did we do before Google?  Is Google going to take over the world one day?  I digress…

Anyway, I loaded some slide-shows onto a separate page, however even I didn’t notice the second page at first with this layout.  Look in the top right corner and you will see where it says “My Photos” click there and it will take you to the slide shows.  As I load more pages, I’m guessing it will add the names along side that one.  Feel free to leave comments or even critiques…

Well, I’ve had this new home for about 24 hours now and I’ve been trying to tweak it for about 22 hours.  Ugh!  Why is it every time I begin learning something I become addicted to it?  There are so many things I need to be doing, but I can’t seem to put this down.  What have I managed to accomplish in this 22 hours?  Let’s see, I finally found out how to get the dumb weather on here.  I was able to get my juke box added from my myspace (it looks a little sloppy cause it doesn’t really fit-but hey it’s here and it works), OH and here’s the biggie-I totally managed to delete an entire column of my old layout, so now I have this purple one.  I think I actually like this one better.  I can’t have my picture of Mom’s flowers at the top like I could on the old one, but hey you win some/you loose some.

I promised my boss I would do a couple reports for her while I was on vacation, I haven’t started them.  So I suppose I’d better put this aside for now and get started…The real world is starting to hit me in the head.  Tomorrow I have to actually leave the house.  What the heck?

Hi everyone-I’ve been on vacation since January 1st.  Some would go on a trip, others would clean out their closets, yet others may even catch up on some movies.  What did I decide to do?  Move my blog.  Exciting stuff, huh?  I will no longer be posting here.

I’ll be posting at this location.  I have to say, I give full credit to my internet friend Rob La Gesse.  You can view his blog here.  I encourage all of you guys to check it out.  This guy took a lot of time out of his day to help set me up on Wordpress when I was struggling.  Thank you Rob!!  I think I’m going to like it over here.

As you can see, I now have my own domain.  Oooh, I’m in the big time now!    If anyone cares to, they can receive notices via email when I post a blog, or sign up with any of the normal RSS readers.  I know I haven’t been writing much lately, but as I was warned, having my own domain would make me feel ‘warm and fuzzy’ and make me want to write more often.

So, here it is.  My new beginning.  Thanks for anyone who may of followed me over.  Talk to you all soon.  K.