Idaho Mountain Express: Fish & Game prepares for fall wolf hunt – August 5, 2009

By JASON KAUFFMAN

Express Staff Writer

Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Randy Budge speaks about the challenges of managing wolves in the state to a gathering of Western attorneys general in Sun Valley on Monday. Photo by Willy Cook

At least one high-ranking wildlife official in Idaho believes a wolf hunt will happen in the state later this fall regardless of whether the species remains under the state’s control.

Speaking in Sun Valley on Monday, Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Randy Budge said many of the state’s hunters are so upset by Idaho’s growing wolf population they might take matters into their own hands if conservationists successfully derail the federal government’s latest delisting of wolves in the northern Rockies. Budge made his prediction while speaking about the challenges of managing natural resource issues at the annual Conference of Western Attorneys General, at Sun Valley Resort from Aug. 2-5.

Whatever happens, Budge predicted, a wolf hunt will take place in Idaho’s backcountry this fall.

“It will either be a state-authorized one or it will be an illegal one,” he said.

Whether strong remarks like that play into conservationists’ hands remains to be seen. In early June, conservation groups filed suit against the federal government in an effort to reverse a decision that removed Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains.

According to the 13 groups that filed the lawsuit, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar failed to fully consider both scientific and legal inadequacies underlying the delisting rule—released in the waning days of the Bush administration—before adopting it on April 2. The groups claim the rule will allow more than two-thirds of the region’s wolves to be killed before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would even consider stepping back in and restoring protections.

The federal government’s April delisting did not include the state of Wyoming, whose wolf management plan the Fish and Wildlife Service has deemed inadequate. Wyoming officials have also filed suit against the federal government challenging their absence from the delisting.

Both lawsuits are still pending.

via Idaho Mountain Express: Fish & Game prepares for fall wolf hunt – August 5, 2009.