Conservation groups are fighting a Bush administration plan that would allow the states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana to kill half of the Rocky Mountain wolf population, including by shooting wolves from the air, while they are still protected under the Endangered Species Act. In an effort to bar states from aerial gunning and other state-sponsored killing of wolves, seven conservation groups filed a suit in federal district court today to stop the implementation of the rule.
The new rule lowers the bar for wolf killing when a state determines that wolves may be having some impact on populations of elk, deer, or other wild ungulates. The Bush Administration says the rule change is necessary because the previous standard required states to show that wolves are the primary cause of a decline in wild ungulate numbers. That threshold has provenimpossible to meet because nearly all elk herds in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana are above population objectives, and wolves have never been determined to have primarily caused a population decline.
Today's action will allow the states to kill all but 600 of the approximately 1,500 wolves in the region. The rule applies to wolves in central Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone area
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