Future for gray wolves?

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Future for gray wolves?

December 21st, 2011

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

ATLANTA, Mich. — The gray wolf populations in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin have recovered from near extinction and as a result will be removed from the endangered species list, the Obama administration announced Wednesday.

Citing a “robust, self-sustaining wolf population” in those states, the Fish and Wildlife Service finalized a proposal first made last May. The formal delisting will take place next month.

The decision follows a trend of the federal government wanting to get out of the wolf protection business after devoting four decades and tens of millions of dollars to saving the species.

Instead, individual states are being given control over the future of the legendary predator.

Wolf populations will be monitored for at least five years and can be relisted at any time if it appears they cannot sustain themselves, the Interior Department stated.

The gray wolf has recovered from near-extinction in the lower 48 states and now stands at a historical crossroads that could test both its reputation for resilience and the tolerance of ranchers and hunters who bemoan its attacks on livestock and big game.

Since being added to the federal endangered species list in 1974, the American wolf population has grown fivefold — to about 6,200 animals wandering parts of 10 states outside Alaska.

But the legal shield that made it a federal crime to gun down the wolves has been lifted in many areas — even though wolves have returned only to isolated pockets of the territory they once occupied, and increasing numbers are dying at the hands of hunters, wildlife agents and ranchers protecting livestock.

Wolves “are in the best position they’ve been in for the past 100 years,” said David Mech, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Paul, Minn., and a leading wolf expert. The animals’ long-term survival will “depend on how much wild land remains available, because wolves are not compatible with areas that are agricultural and have a lot of humans. There’s just too much conflict.”

Congress last spring canceled the animals’ endangered status in five Western states. The Obama administration plans to decide whether to also lift protections in 29 Eastern states that presently have no wolves. Similar actions are planned for most remaining Western states and the Great Plains.

Since 1991, the federal government has spent $92.6 million on gray wolf recovery programs, and state agencies have chipped in $13.9 million, according to documents reviewed by the Associated Press.

“We are ready to declare success in those areas where wolves are now secure, turn over management responsibility to the states and begin to focus our limited resources on other species that are in trouble,” said Gary Frazer, assistant director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species program.

In Montana and Idaho, where wolves can now be legally hunted and trapped, officials are seeking to sharply drive down wolf numbers this winter to curb attacks on farm animals and elk herds.

Some scientists and advocates say the hunts offer a preview of what will happen when the federal safeguards are lifted elsewhere. The government, they say, is giving up the recovery effort too soon, before packs can take hold in new areas. Vast, wild territories in the southern Rockies and Northeast are ripe for wolves but unoccupied.

“Wolf recovery in the Midwest has been a tremendous success, but the job is far from complete,” said Collette Adkins Giese, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The three Great Lakes states with wolves all plan to kill more wolves and to reduce populations through hunts and other means. Wolves remain threatened by human intolerance and persecution. More should be done to help people live with wolves and increase tolerance before protections are removed.”

Federal officials are grappling with tight budgets and political pressure to expand hunting and prevent wolves from invading new turf. They insist the animals best known for their eerie howl, graceful lope and ruthless efficiency in slaughtering prey will get by on their own with help from state agencies.

The government still plans to nurture a fledgling Mexican gray wolf population in the desert Southwest. It’s also weighing whether to expand protections for small numbers of the animals that have slipped into the Pacific Northwest from Canada.

However, there are no plans to promote their return elsewhere. Federal officials say it’s not the government’s job to return wolves to their previous range as long as the population is stable.

North America was once home to as many as a couple of million gray wolves, which are prolific breeders. But by the 1930s, fur traders, bounty hunters and government agents had poisoned, trapped and shot almost all wolves outside Canada and Alaska.

The surviving 1,200 were clustered in northern Minnesota in the 1970s. After the species was added to the endangered list, their numbers rocketed to nearly 3,000 in the state — and they gradually spread elsewhere.

Today, Wisconsin has about 782 wolves, Michigan 687 — far above what biologists said were sustainable populations.

The success story is hardly surprising in woodlands teeming with deer, said John Vucetich, a biologist at Michigan Tech University. But even in such an ideal setting, the wolves were able to return only when killing them became illegal.

“What do wolves need to survive?” Vucetich said. “They need forest cover, and they need prey. And they need not to be shot.”

Shooting already is happening — legally or not — as adventurous wolves range into new regions such as Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and the plains of eastern Montana.

Those sightings are unsettling to farmers because packs have killed thousands of livestock nationwide during their comeback.