Column: Conservationists' Opposition to Hunting Wolves is Wrongheaded
A column written by a former ICL staffer on wolf hunting.
I never thought I’d say this, but wolf recovery in the West has been the most successful program ever accomplished under the Endangered Species Act.
Thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are more than 1,650 wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming today, as well as a couple more wolves in Oregon, Washington and Utah. Only 15 years ago, there were none.
For many years I doubted that wolves could ever be restored to the West. Now, packs can be found in most of the formerly vacant drainages in central Idaho, filling nearly all of their original niches. But because of their recovery, wolves can now be hunted in Idaho and Montana, where about 20 percent of the wolf population is scheduled to be killed this year. For just 12 bucks, you, too, can shoot a wolf in Idaho.
In the 1980s, I worked with the Idaho Conservation League, and we challenged the original wolf reintroduction proposal in court because we had evidence that two wolves already lived in northern Idaho.
The Fish and Wildlife Service argued that only a reintroduction plan could recover the wolves in the Northern Rockies, and we lost the case. The federal agency was right, however, and its work in wolf recovery is, frankly, an amazing accomplishment.
