USFWS "clarifies" number of wolf packs Wyoming must maintain outside YNP and GTNP

USFWS "clarifies" number of wolf packs Wyoming must maintain outside YNP and GTNP

Rewritten on May 27, 2003

A recent story reported in a number of news media says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has "clarified a key issue that will allow development of a Wyoming wolf management plan -- the minimum number of packs the state must maintain."
USFWS Regional Director Ralph Morgenweck said it would be acceptable if the State of Wyoming maintained a minimum of seven packs outside Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park. Presently about 8 exist in Wyoming outside these Parks. They are Absaroka, Beartooth (lives party in Montana), Green River, Greybull, Sunlight Basin, Teton, Washakie, and Yellowstone Delta (which live mostly inside Yellowstone Park, but wanders into the Teton Wilderness on the national forest just to the south of Yellowstone Park).
On Feb. 28 the Wyoming legislature passed a bill where the state suggests it will maintain 7 packs outside the two Parks. Wyoming assumed the Parks would maintain 8 or more packs, making a total of at least 15 packs in the State of Wyoming. Presently Yellowstone has well more than 8 packs, but the number fluctuates, and the question has not been answered whether packs like the new Slough Creek Pack, the Rose Creek II Pack, and the Druid Pack will count as Wyoming Packs because their YNP range is partly into Montana. Moreover, does the Wyoming Beartooth Pack outside the YNP, but which also ranges into Montana, count?
The biggest problem is that the Legislature divided the non-Park Wyoming wolves into two categories -- "trophy game areas" which wolves could only be killed by permit, such as a hunt, and areas where they are "predators," and can be shot for any reason by anyone at any time. All of the existing non-Park wolf packs, except Yellowstone Delta, spend part, and often all of their time in areas where wolves can be shot "for fun," etc. at any time. Morganweck was skeptical about this part of the Wyoming plan. He was quoted in the Jackson Hole Zone "Only protecting wolves in parks and a few wilderness areas may not go far enough to ensure the species’ survival. “We have repeatedly stated, and continue to believe, that only protecting wolves from unregulated human-caused mortality in this small area will not provide adequate assurances that the wolf population in the Greater Yellowstone Area will not decline to the point where it becomes threatened again.” See: http://www.jhzone.com/viewinfo.cfm?ObjectID=84BC1802-8D2A-11D7-AED9009027940B3E
My opinion, and one strongly held, is the fundamental problem with the Wyoming wolf plan is that is manages wolves by where they are located, rather than managing them on the basis of the behavior, for good or ill, that they display. Many Wyoming legislators and quite a few residents like to draw a circle around Yellowstone and some of the adjacent wildlands and insist that part of the state is for tourists, wildlife, and Jackson Hole residents (whom they disdain except when asking for campaign donations). This psychological geography makes wildlife management and state politics problematic.
The Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which includes not just Yellowstone Park, but much non-Park land in Wyoming and millions more acres north and west of the Park in Montana and Idaho, presently has around 23 packs in total (this number is subject to changes as new pups are counted this spring).
Tom Wilkinson just had a good opinion piece on Dave Moody and the Wyoming wolf plan. See May 27, 2003. "We need civil servants like biologist Dave Moody." By Todd Wilkinson.

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