American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee

Author:Nate Blakeslee [Blakeslee, Nate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-23T04:00:00+00:00

8

RETURN TO THE LAMAR VALLEY

Judge Molloy issued his ruling on Thursday, August 5, 2010. He signed the decision at 2:43 in the afternoon, too late for the news to make Friday morning’s papers, buying himself—and every other government official involved—one last day of peace before the storm hit. The news was this: wolves must be returned to the endangered species list throughout the Northern Rockies, effective immediately.

Declaring wolves recovered in Idaho and Montana but still endangered in Wyoming did not pass legal muster, Molloy decided. Nothing in the language of the Endangered Species Act or in its legislative history allowed for such a maneuver, despite Fish and Wildlife’s creative effort to reinterpret the code. “Even if the Service’s solution is pragmatic, or even practical,” the judge wrote, “it is at its heart a political solution that does not comply with the ESA.” Doug Honnold had won.

It was just two weeks before Idaho officials were scheduled to announce wolf-hunting quotas for the fall; Montana game regulators had already set a limit of 186 wolves, more than double the number authorized in 2009. Both hunts would have to be canceled. The New York Times lauded the ruling in an editorial. “State plans meant to satisfy hunters rather than protect the wolves cannot do that,” the editors wrote. “The gray wolf may need federal protection for years to come.”

Honnold and his clients were delighted, though in reality it wasn’t a total victory. Molloy had declined to rule on any of the other issues raised by the plaintiffs, such as the sufficiency of the recovery standards, or the question of whether genuine connectivity had been achieved. In Molloy’s view, the fundamental flaw in the rule’s logic—holding that some Northern Rockies wolves were endangered while others weren’t—rendered all the other issues moot. Honnold felt he had made a compelling case that Fish and Wildlife’s entire approach to recovery needed to be revisited, but Molloy had punted on that question.

Anticipating the backlash, Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, sought to channel blame away from the federal government and toward Wyoming officials, whose recalcitrance had forced the judge to rule as he did. Governor Freudenthal did take some lumps in the days that followed, but inevitably most of the vitriol was aimed at the feds. “I don’t know why any state would ever allow another reintroduction of a species because the federal government and radical environmentalists simply cannot live up to their word and allow state management,” Idaho governor Butch Otter told reporters.

Civil disobedience—another round of “shoot, shovel, and shut up”—was widely predicted. The response from frustrated officials in Idaho County, who oversaw a stretch of prime wolf habitat in the Lolo National Forest along the Montana border, captured the mood in rural Idaho. “At what point do we consider ourselves backed into a corner?” a county commissioner asked at a meeting shortly after the ruling was announced. “Can we file an action [saying] to the judge, ‘You’re not a wildlife biologist. Sit down and shut up?’ ”

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