WOLF'S FUTURE RIDES ON LEGISLATIVE ACTION: HB 229
Status: House, Awaiting Travel Committee action Feb. 4

HB 229 (Rep. Mike Baker, HD 28/R-Thermopolis, sponsor) would classify the gray wolf as both a trophy game species and a predator in various parts of the state once the federal government removes the wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The wolf has reached the recovery criteria of 15 breeding pairs, set by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before the 1995 reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park. But the federal agency won't formally delist the wolf until the state crafts a management plan the USFWS will accept as being adequately protective of the species to prevent re-endangerment.

Wolves are currently classified as predators throughout the state, a status that allows unregulated killing of animals. In order to satisfy the federal wildlife agency that the state can protect the gray wolf, the predator status will have to be changed.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologists proposed a wolf management plan based on "trophy game" status statewide. That status would allow the department to manage the wolf population through hunting, while still granting property owners the right to kill a wolf found destroying livestock.

But the agriculture-dominated Game and Fish Commission threw out the plan and ordered the department to craft a management plan that classified the wolf as trophy game in parts of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and as a predator elsewhere in Wyoming.

Baker's bill writes that arrangement into law, but in a way that looks unlikely to satisfy the USFWS. Wolves would only be given "trophy game" status in Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks and the wilderness areas of the Shoshone and Bridger-Teton National Forests -- an area too small to guarantee a sufficient prey base.

Worse still, amendments pushed by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association further curtailed that area to include only the wilderness areas directly adjoining Yellowstone.

This the only piece of legislation this session to deal with the wolf's legal status, meaning activists both for and against the creature will have to focus on HB 229 as the sole vehicle for establishing future state management policy for the wolf. Please call your representative today and urge him or her to support trophy game status statewide for the gray wolf.
 

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