This article was pulled directly from the Idaho Reporter.com.
Idaho wildlife officials will leave it to the federal government to manage wolves in the state. Gov. Butch Otter sent U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar a letter Monday saying that the state won’t manage wolves as a designated agent of the federal government.
“While some herald the introduction of wolves and the current population as a biological triumph, history will show that this program as a tragic example of oppressive, ham-handed ‘conservation’ at its worst,” Otter said in his letter to Salazar. “Starting today, at least the state will no longer be complicit.”
State and federal officials, including Otter and Salazar, have communicated regularly since an August federal court decision put wolves in Idaho and Montana back on the endangered species list. That ruling ended Idaho’s public wolf hunt. Otter said that without the wolf hunt, there is no reason for Idaho to be involved in managing wolves.
With the governor’s decision, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) will no longer monitor wolf populations, investigate illegal wolf killings, or run a program helping livestock producers whose animals are killed by wolves. It’s unclear if or how federal agencies will step in to manage wolves. Officials with the governor’s office and IDFG said they haven’t heard a response, and the Interior Department has not responded to phone calls from IdahoReporter.com.
“We don’t know how this is going to shake out,” said IDFG spokesman Ed Mitchell. “It starts right now.”
Otter said he didn’t want money from hunting and fishing licenses to pay for monitoring wolves while a public hunt is barred. He also said the Idaho is still working with the feds on a path to ultimately delisting wolves.
Mitchell said the agency spent $1.7 million on wolves during its last fiscal year. Approximately $500,000 came from license fees, with the rest coming from federal funding sources. Two IDFG biologists who focused on wolves will now turn their attention to ungulates, including elk, moose, and deer, that can be prey to wolves.
The governor’s decision was called reckless by Keith Allred, the Democratic challenger in the November election. Allred, who also panned the August court decision protecting wolves, said Idaho should manages its wolf population.
“Idaho needs to control its own destiny, and in an Allred administration we’d take control of this issue, not avoid it,” Allred said in a news release.
Defenders of Wildlife, one of the environmental groups that brought the lawsuit ending Idaho’s wolf hunt, also criticized Otter. “Refusing to allow state agencies to participate in wolf management or to investigate, or enforce against, illegal killings of wolves is political showmanship, not the statesmanship that one expects from a governor,” Defenders President Rodger Schlickeisen said in a news release.
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