RMEF Donation to Assist Montana Wolf Management

MISSOULA, Mont.–Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) accepted a $25,000 donation from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation this week to assist with its state wolf management efforts.

The focus of the funding is to expand FWP’s wolf collaring program in areas where the impact on elk, deer and other ungulates is particularly severe. Placing more collars on wolves will allow FWP to better expand the science of wolves by furthering the understanding of their territory, home range, the number of wolves in a pack, and helping to implement Montana’s approved wolf management plan.

“This is a part of a continuing commitment by RMEF to support the ultimate goal of state management, which is to sustain all species on balance with the available habitat and local communities where people live,” said David Allen, RMEF president and CEO. ”

Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks appreciates the partnership it has with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,” said department director Jeff Hagener. “This donation is another example of RMEF’s long-time commitment to wildlife conservation in Montana.”

In keeping with the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, RMEF supports state-regulated hunting and trapping as the preferred tools of wolf management. RMEF staunchly supports management to balance and control wolf populations.

“The more collars we can get on wolves, the better understanding we’ll have on how many wolves are really out there, where they go on the landscape, and help to ensure the future of elk and all wildlife,” added Allen.

RMEF also remains committed to learning more about wolves through research efforts. Since 1989, RMEF invested more than $400,000 in research grants to advance scientific understanding of wolves, wolf interactions with other species, and overall wolf management. The total includes more than $200,000 in science grants in just the past five years, more than any other five-year period in RMEF history. Most of the contributions paid for independent research by leading universities, state and federal wildlife conservation agencies and tribes.

Earlier this month, RMEF furthered its commitment to elk and elk country in Montana by announcing grants that total $276,195 that will fund more than 20 habitat projects that will positively affect more than 20,000 acres of habitat in 15 different counties.

In Maine It’s That Time When Coyotes Devour Deer Fawns

The below caption and photograph was sent to me via email. This occurred in “Downeast” Maine recently. The person who sent this to me is very trustworthy and I assume the photo and story to be authentic. This is about the time that whitetail deer in Maine have their fawns. The coyotes and bears have learned over the years where the deer traditionally have their fawns. They can actually smell the odor from a new-born fawn and move in for the kill and lunch. It is a reality of nature but when there are too many coyotes and too many bears, it raises hell with the deer herd.

“I found the head of a fawn yesterday while working for Norm in Jonesport. Fresh coyote tracks in the mud beside it were the only other clue. I assume that the dog was walking towards me on the woods road and dropped the head when it heard me coming. No sign of blood or other body parts. I’d walked in on the same trail six hours earlier. The head was about the size of my two hands laid palm to palm. Coyotes serenaded me further down the path.

“That’s a pretty impressive bite through the neck. Never know what you’ll find in the down east woods.”

HSUS Wouldn’t Know Inhumane if it Bit Them in the Face

Katie Hansberry, Maine state director of The Humane Society of the United States, penned an opinion piece found in The Sun Journal about Maine’s bear management tools and tactics and proves she knows nothing about inhumane treatment of animals or human beings for that matter; certainly nothing about wildlife management.

I will agree with her on one issue. She faults the efforts of Maine legislators for proposing a bill that would prohibit the right of the citizens to petition the state concerning issues with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. It’s a dumb idea and should not be passed, as much as I would like to see groups like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), a left-wing radical group of idiots and perverts, go play with grizzly bears and leave Maine citizens alone.

However, the fact that human-hating members of HSUS refuse to except, that as much as they hate man, we are a part of the grand scheme of things and as long as there exists man and beast, there will be conflicts. Groups like HSUS espouse to the idea of killing man in order that some animal may live.

Maine presently has perhaps the largest population ever of black bears. Much of the reason for this is because the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) can’t get enough hunters interested in hunting bears to help control the population. Because of that, bears are increasing at greater numbers than desirable and there are negative consequences as a result. Bears kill deer fawns and moose calves and as a result too many of these animals are being killed which changes the age structure of the deer and moose herds and if allowed to run unchecked, the risk exists that eventually those populations become unsustainable. MDIFW needs to find more ways to legally kill bears rather than protecting them.

Aside from what too many bears can and are doing to Maine’s landscape concerning other species, increased numbers of bears means increased numbers of encounters with humans. It’s easy to toss out the statement that bear attacks on humans are rare, especially when those bears aren’t threatening you directly. The truth is they do happen and will continue to happen so long as there is no means of controlling bear numbers.

HSUS wants to end all hunting, trapping and fishing because they are perverts in love with animals more than they care for the existence of human beings. As such they are absent any form or intelligent, rational thinking when it comes to the management of wild animals.

Hansberry faults the Joint Standing Committee of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (JSC) for taking an immediate vote to defeat a bill sponsored by HSUS that would have banned trapping bears and hunting them with dogs. Her attempt seems to be to demonize the Committee as somehow being corrupt. There was no need for the JSC to have much of any discussion about this issue. They’ve been down this road before and they understand that the MDIFW needs and must have all the proper, historic, tried and true tools available to them in order to properly and responsibly manage black bears. Science and history prove this. What’s to discuss?

HSUS is continually belaboring the issue that killing any animal by any means is “inhumane.” HSUS wouldn’t recognize inhumane if it jumped up and bit them on the rear end. Their efforts are about making money and conning people out of their money in order to pay large salaries. History shows that when bear numbers get too large, human encounters go up. There is too much competition for food and habitat and these animals then begin to starve and disease becomes rampant. What is humane about that? And what is humane about a starving bear attacking a person, perhaps your child, in order to eat.

The North American Model of Wildlife Management has been around for a long time and is a proven model that is the envy of the world over. Most problems that exist in this world with wildlife management comes from the actions of perverts like the HSUS. Don’t listen to their propaganda. They only want to lie and play on your emotions in order to get you to hand over your money to them. Maine needs viable and proven bear and other wildlife management based on science and reality.

Black bears are a large predator and history shows that protecting large predators has very devastating effects on the rest of the animals that need management as well. Protecting predators unnecessarily is irresponsible and removing proven management skills of wildlife is inhumane.

USFWS Wants to “Delist” Gray Wolves in All U.S…..Really?

If the U.S. Government has any real aptitude it’s ineptitude and a disregard for rule of law while at the same time creating such confusion few can keep up…..by design. For this reason, I believe the latest action by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), a proposal for removal of federal protection of the gray wolf in all of the lower 48 states, with the exception of a Distinct Population Segment in the Southwest, is deliberate and intentional as a means to create further chaos and lay the ground work for environmentalists to further pad their bank accounts through lawsuits and money drives. It has little or nothing to do with what’s in the best interest of wolves or other wildlife effected by wolves.

It may be extremely difficult for some to gain an understanding of the complexity of this entire historical pageantry of pretentiousness by the USFWS to list, delist, create, list and delist populations of gray wolves across the nation. At some point in time, I would highly recommend readers to reread, “USFWS Reinstates Protection For Wolves “In Compliance With Court Orders”", to gain a bit of history and the confusing and deficient court rulings that have left the status of the application of the Endangered Species Act toward wolves initially and all species ultimately, in shambles. But this stops nobody from plodding along, mostly because it is a cash cow.

The most basic foundation created in the Endangered Species Act, whether we like it or not, is the criteria that must be met BEFORE any species can be listed and regulated by the Federal Government.

SEC. 4. (a) GENERAL
.—(1) The Secretary shall by regulation promulgated in accordance with subsection (b) determine whether any species is an endangered species or a threatened species because of any of the following factors:
(A) the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range;
(B) overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes;
(C) disease or predation;
(D) the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; or
(E) other natural or manmade factors affecting its continued existence.

What few people fail to understand is that while ALL five of these circumstances must be met BEFORE a species can be placed under federal protection, ALL five of the same circumstances must be rectified BEFORE a species can be removed from federal protection. It is imperative to have that understanding in order to attempt to figure out just what in the hell the USFWS is doing now.

The Endangered Species Act was signed into law in 1973. It was 1978 that the USFWS made the determination to list gray wolves as an endangered species in all the lower 48 states, with the exception of Minnesota. Wolves in that state where declared “threatened.” One would assume that it was shown by the USFWS that all five criteria existed in all 48 states.

Before anyone can make a determination as to the support or opposition of the USFWS’s recent action to delist wolves in all the lower 48 states, they must know the history, including all the court rulings, at least pertaining to wolves and those cases used as precedence in wolf lawsuits. What is clear is nothing is clear. Again, please read the article linked to above.

In brief, in 1978 the USFWS declares wolves protected in all 48 states. At different times after 1978, the feds began creating “Distinct Population Segments” (DPS), a term used to describe the will of the USFWS to section-off a piece of land and declare that any species contained within the imaginary borders of that land a separate and somehow “distinct” population.

A DPS was created in the Northern Rockies for the purpose of wolf introduction. Another in the Southwest for the same reason. In the Western Great Lakes, the feds carved out more imaginary boundaries within a previously carved out region, in order to remove or delist wolves from federal protection. It seemed that with these actions by the USFWS, the federal government was using a tactic, not described in the Endangered Species Act, to achieve scientific and political goals at the whim of the agency.

Several court cases (written about in the link above) determined that it was illegal for the USFWS to create Distinct Population Segments. This term is not used in the ESA and it wasn’t until some time, considerably later, that the Marine Fisheries Service made an attempt to define DPS and use it to backdoor authority to implement the tactic of DPS creation to satisfy scientific wants and political agendas.

Consequently, by 2008, the USFWS, explaining they were carrying out the rulings of the courts, and in their own interpretation of the court rulings, turned the clock back and mapped out that gray wolves were labeled as endangered or threatened in all 48 lower states, with exceptions. The USFWS opted to maintain the two “Nonessential Experimental Populations” (NEP) of wolves in the Northern Rockies and the Southwest, while not labeling them as Distinct Population Segments, presumably because they saw the rulings as stating DPS creation to be illegal. But, your guess is as good as mine.

From a legal perspective, in my opinion, the USFWS has no other option available to them, concerning wolves, other than an all or nothing event…..well, that is if this particular tactic fits into the present narrative and agenda of the agency. In other words, the Feds can’t create pockets of wolf populations and remove them from federal protection. At face value, one would think that the USFWS has decided that within the entire lower 48 states, ALL five of the ESA’s criteria used to list wolves as endangered and threatened, has been met. But has it, or better yet, does the USFWS care?

Common sense, which is missing from anything government would use, tells me that gray wolves were never endangered to begin with. One could reasonably argue that as the courts have ruled that the USFWS cannot arbitrarily create boundaries in order to change the status of wolves within those boundaries, then how can you disregard that same thinking as it pertains to any kind of boundary, including that of the U.S. and Canada for instance?

Being that the ESA is no longer a rule of law, once thought to be a tool to limit or stop the extirpation of species, and has become a political lever, there is little reason to believe the USFWS has made scientific determinations about the status of wolves in the lower 48 states, leaving the Federal Government wide open for lawsuits that they know they cannot win……by design.

Historically, the USFWS has shown little or no regard for court rulings and rule of law, unless called to the carpet by lawsuits. Therefore I have serious doubts that the USFWS is attempting to follow the rule of law by recognizing the courts have placed them in a position of “all or nothing” when it comes to delisting gray wolves.

I stated above that it is my belief, based on science and common sense, that wolves in the lower 48 states should never have been placed on the Endangered Species Act list. And I would like nothing more than to see the delising come about but it isn’t going to happen and the Feds know it. It is an exercise in futility for anyone to get their hopes up that delisting will occur nationwide. There’s too much money to be made and let’s face it. Wolves have been a great weapon toward the destruction of human existence. With an administration currently that has done more in that regard than perhaps any that have come before him, why should we even considered delisting of wolves possible?

RMEF Supports Delisting of Wolves in Lower 48 States

MISSOULA, Mont.–The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation fully supports an announcement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to delist gray wolves in the continental United States.

“We applaud this decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” said David Allen, RMEF president and CEO. “The wolf recovery plan was highly successful and the science behind it remains very strong and credible.”

The FWS plan calls for individual state agencies to manage wolves according to the needs of each state by monitoring populations, setting wolf hunting seasons and limits, and attempting to prevent and resolve livestock conflicts. The only exception of the Lower 48 delisting is a small population of the Mexican gray wolf subspecies in Arizona and New Mexico.

“From the moment a species requires the protection of the Endangered Species Act, our goal is to work with our partners to address the threats it faces and ensure its recovery,” said Service Director Dan Ashe. “An exhaustive review of the latest scientific and taxonomic information shows that we have accomplished that goal with the gray wolf, allowing us to focus our work under the ESA on recovery of the Mexican wolf subspecies in the Southwest.”

“This is a management success story. State agencies from coast to coast are keenly aware of the wolf recovery program and are extremely capable of sustaining viable wolf populations within the borders of their states through their wolf management plans,” added Allen. “The best way to manage the gray wolf is to allow state agencies to do it, just like they manage all other wildlife.”

In the past two years, the federal government removed wolves from the Endangered Species List list in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, where there is a minimum population of nearly 1,700 wolves, and in the Great Lakes region, where wolves numbered more than 4,000 prior to delisting. Those population totals greatly exceed the original recovery thresholds set by FWS scientists.

Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin and Wyoming already have wolf management plans in place and held hunting and trapping seasons in 2012. Michigan formulated a management plan and will hold its first wolf hunt this fall. Oregon and Washington, which have measureable populations, also have current management plans but they do not include hunting.

“In no way is regulated hunting and trapping decimating the species as some environmental groups claim. There is no science to support that. Hunting and trapping are viable management tools,” said Allen.

“Hunters have played a key role for decades in helping to manage and sustain dozens of game populations in North America, and they can do the same for wolves,” said Mike Jimenez, FWS Wolf Recovery Coordinator for the Northern Rockies population. “Hunting remains an accepted and successful wildlife management tool that helps to reduce conflicts with humans, maintain stable populations and generate public support.”

Joke: “develop opportunities to increase hunter and trapper effectiveness” to Restore Elk Populations

The joke gets bigger with each passing hunting and trapping season. While one could say that the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) has made progress to acknowledge that the state’s missing elk herds are due in part to predation, the joke remains that loss and changing habitat is blamed as well and IDFG’s plan on limiting predation is to, “develop opportunities to increase hunter and trapper effectiveness”, that is according to the Idaho County Free Press.

Think about the brains that must have existed that would come up with a plan to make hunting and trapping of wolves more effective. To admit that predation by wolves is a part of the problem with shrinking elk herds and then present a plan that is akin to urinating over the side of an ocean liner thinking you might flood the coastline has to be considered an elitist attempt to placate what IDFG believes is an ignorant citizenry.

In 2009 I wrote that Idaho’s proposed plans on how to “manage” wolves, if they were ever taken off the Endangered Species List, would be ineffective. In addition, I crafted a multi-part series, “To Catch a Wolf”, highlighting the difficulties historically worldwide in “managing” wolves. I enclose in quotes “manage” because prolific predators like wolves aren’t managed, as in categorizing them as a game species, but need to be controlled.

You can find more information on Idaho’s lack of success in controlling wolves with links to the information I referenced above by following this link.

Should IDFG follow the same pattern of wolf management, and there is no reason to think they won’t, it will mirror what has taken place so far. It took over a decade for IDFG to admit that wolves might be having a negative impact on the Lolo elk herd. Now they acknowledge wolves play a role and propose an idiotic plan that will do nothing to limit wolves and increase elk populations. One can expect that 10 years from now, IDFG might declare that their idea of making more effective wolf hunters and trappers to better “manage” wolves, didn’t work. And yet again, there is always the excuse to fall back on that habitat is the real problem.

Expect no real changes. Let’s go pull some knapweed and plant some grass.

More Wolf Mythology

By Jim Beers

ONCE UPON A TIME….

1. From the Pinedale WY News re: Washington State Wolves:

“”Wolf populations are increasing faster than anyone had imagined,” the legislators said in their April 23 letter. They urged the commission to act quickly “to maintain social tolerance for gray wolves in northeast Washington in the timeliest manner for residents.”"

Conclusion: Evidently those “Beta” (are there “gamma”, “delta”, “epsilon” and all the way to “omega” wolves?) wolves didn’t get the memo (that ONLY ALPHA wolves breed) and have been sneaking out behind the woodpile and doing naughty (as well as ‘undocumented’ things per our august wildlife professionals) things resulting in more wolf pups than the “Alphas” alone are making.

You couldn’t make up this stuff if you tried.

2. From this morning’s St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press:

Minnesota: Moose study confirms high calf mortality rate

“The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources captured 49 moose calves and fitted them with GPS transmitter collars. Within days of finishing their work, 22 of the newborns already had died.”

“Most were killed by bears and wolves.”

“We knew that we would lose a lot of calves quickly,” DNR lead moose researcher Glenn DelGiudice said. “But to see it happening in real time like this is all new for us.”

“We used to see a ratio of about 100 cows to 40 or 45 calves each winter. But in recent years that’s been more like 20 or 30 calves, and that’s not sustainable,” Moen said.

“DelGiudice’s $424,000 study is part of a two-pronged effort to find out why the northeast Minnesota moose herd is plummeting.”

Conclusion: I have written six articles since moving to Minnesota five years ago about the effect the wolf population explosion was having on Minnesota moose. Newspapers refused to run Letter to the Editor about them. I sent copies of the articles to friends and acquaintances that hunted and fished in the State and almost universally they didn’t want to talk about it or told me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. For years The August and Honorable (May Gaia Be Praised) Minnesota DNR and their subcontractors at the newspapers and at “the” University have vehemently (and to me laughingly) denied that predation from any source was responsible for the steady disappearance of moose as wolves increased.

The reason for this decades-long subterfuge was and is that the DNR would have had to KILL [oooohhh!] the predators in order to maintain moose hunting and thereby offend their new greenie clients. This was and is as evident as the nose on your face. Like the old canard, “the beatings will continue until morale improves”; people are to be managed for wildlife: those that suggest that wildlife are to be managed for people are to be marginalized or purged from the system!

So the DNR recently closed all Moose hunting (forever??) in Minnesota for lack of moose. To say that a moose permit was THE MOST-PRIZED license a Minnesotan could get (the odds were equivalent to winning the Lottery) would be an understatement. Now this “poor” researcher (he only got $424,000 to “discover” what any Minnesotan with half a brain in a wolf country bar already knew) admits “this is all new for us.”

Any Minnesotan could have asked why the Northern Yellowstone Elk herd in Montana disappeared; why the Lolo elk herd in Idaho disappeared; and why Upper Rocky Mt. moose are now going the way of the Dodo bird and Passenger Pigeon: ALL AS WOLVES BECAME ESTABLISHED AND THEIR POPULATIONS EXPLODED IN THOSE ENVIRONS! My oh my, what a coincidence.

This skit belongs on Prairie Home Companion in a bar conversation with all those guys hitting themselves on the forehead with those new plastic beer mugs that just replaced the old heavy glass ones.

PS In all honesty, Minnesota is no different than most other states in worshiping every word that drips from the mouths of “the wildlife” boys and girls. I just got back in from Iowa and they are setting a new low in this regard as it seems more and more state fish and wildlife agencies race to the bottom as they snivel at the feet of federal bureaucrats and their promises of money and jobs.

God Help Us.

Jim Beers
1 June 2013

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net

Too Many Bears, Too Many Predator Lovers

Maine has a lot of forest. Maine has a lot of bears. Too many bears presents too many problems, like killing too many deer and moose fawns in the Spring and bears banging down people’s back doors and yards looking for something to eat, either because of too many bears or not enough to eat or both.

But Maine is, once again, being threatened by a citizens’ referendum against bear hunting and trapping. The Humane Society of the United States, unsuccessfully tried passing legislation in the Pine Tree State, to severely limit bear hunting and to end trapping and hunting bears with dogs. They threatened that if they lost the fight to get the legislation passed, they would come back next year with a referendum and that would include a proposal to end baiting bear for hunting purposes.

Should such a referendum pass, it would, for all intent and purposes, end hunting and trapping of bears and remove the most essential management tool the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has to control bear populations. If that should happen, well, then Maine can expect some of what I have below for links about bears encountering people. More bears mean more encounters with people, which means……not so good.

In Wisconsin, a man is attacked by a bear and his wife, noticing the attack, grabbed the shotgun. She didn’t know how to load it so she commenced to beat the bear with it.

The above story takes place at a cabin in the woods of Wisconsin. The next story takes place in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

At Incline Village in Nevada, a 325-pound bear enters a condominium on Lake Tahoe and ultimately gets killed because of the threat posed to humans.

And of course the bear/predator lovers and protectors, who live in a different world than the rest of us, will cry that it’s the human’s fault and tell everyone we must learn to live with large predators – meaning we are to become prisoners in our houses.

People should do as much as they reasonably can to reduce the chances of having an encounter with bears. This is no guarantee that it still will not happen. Bears generally mind to themselves but circumstances dictate their behavior. When bears get hungry, whether because of a lack of natural food and/or too much competition, meaning too many bears or other animals competing for the same food source, they go ANYWHERE they can find food. Anywhere!

Hungry Bears

In a way I sort of chuckled yesterday when I read a short news story from a Maine NBC television affiliate, WCSH6 out of Portland, about hungry bears coming out of hibernation. Specifically I got a kick out of this statement:

Police on Tuesday advised residents of one Rumford neighborhood to take in their bird feeders, gas grills and garbage cans after a black bear was spotted wandering around. Police tell the Sun Journal that once the food sources are removed, the bears will return to the woods.

I mean really? The bears will return to the woods? Might I ask why they came out of the woods to begin with? Isn’t it because during this time of the year there is so little natural food, it drives them out of the woods in search for human assistance?

While it is good advice to do what you can to “bear proof” your home and property, the notion that doing so will send the bears back to the woods is more than a bit misleading. The bears will return to the woods as soon as they have natural food to eat; that is providing people don’t continue to feed the bears.

RMEF Receives Intervenor Status in Wyoming Wolf Lawsuit, Seeks Same in Another

MISSOULA, Mont.–A U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. granted the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s request to intervene in a lawsuit by animal rights groups seeking to return federal protection to Wyoming’s wolf population. That means the judge will consider RMEF’s arguments in the case. RMEF also filed to intervene in a similar lawsuit regarding Wyoming wolves based in a Cheyenne, Wyo., U.S District Court.

“This matter is no different than the current case in the Great Lakes or past legal cases in the northern Rocky Mountains,” said David Allen, RMEF president and CEO. “Individual states need to be given the opportunity to manage the wildlife species within their borders. These Wyoming lawsuits seek to frustrate the science-based management plan already laid out and approved by the federal government.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed Wyoming wolves from the federal list of threatened and endangered species in August 2012 with a minimum population estimate at that time of 328 wolves, including 48 packs and 27 breeding pairs. That total included 224 wolves, 36 packs and 19 breeding pairs outside Yellowstone National Park.

A subsequent hunting season led to the harvesting of 42 wolves in the trophy-hunting zone bordering Yellowstone with 26 taken as unprotected predators elsewhere in the state. Wyoming Game and Fish since proposed reducing wolf hunt quotas by half for the 2013 fall season. Wildlife managers must maintain at least 100 wolves, including 10 breeding pair, outside of the Wind River Reservation and Yellowstone.

Addressing the situation, a spokesman for Wyoming Governor Matt Mead, Renny MacKay, stated, “Wolves in Wyoming are clearly recovered. Our management plan is based on the best available science, committing to the sustainability of the wolf population and genetic connectivity in the Northern Rockies. More importantly, our wolf management since delisting has proven the state’s ability and commitment to responsibly manage wolves.”

RMEF has a rich heritage of 26 years of work in Wyoming that includes 514 projects that enhanced or protected more than one million acres. RMEF also made contributions of more than $3.7 million to protect and enhance habitat, manage wildlife, and support conservation and hunting heritage outreach programs in Wyoming.

“RMEF invested nearly $7 million in wildlife research efforts around the country to better understand elk habitat use, population dynamics, predation, habitat management and other such issues. We need to strongly consider and abide by these findings and not frustrate science-based management by allowing these lawsuits to go through. They could affect Wyoming’s elk, deer, moose, wild sheep and other big game species from here on out,” added Allen.

RMEF joins a combination of government and sportsmen organizations including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, State of Wyoming, Safari Club International and the National Rifle Association as defendants. RMEF recently received intervenor status in the Great Lakes region wolf lawsuit.

Next Page »