WYOMING – At least one conservation group was quick to respond to the announcement today that the Department of Interior’s plans to delist wolves from the Endangered Species Act throughout the lower 48 states.
As previously reported, David Bernhardt today announced the move, despite the species being a long way from full recovery across much of their range, says Western Watershed Project (WWP).
“From the Grand Canyon to the Colorado Rockies to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, there are vast areas of public land that offer habitat ideally suited to wolves, and yet the howl of the wolf is absent from these parts of its native range,” said Erik Molvar, executive director for WWP. “To strip away federal protections now is to ensure that the howl will remain forever missing.”
The Environmental Conservation watchdog views today’s news as an extension of President Trump’s sympathetic policies toward the livestock industry, beginning with a cutting of grazing fees on public lands to the lowest rate allowed by federal law.
The move to delist wolves has long been a priority of the livestock industry, which sees the native predators as a threat to their profitability on vast public lands in western states, WWP contends.
“The livestock industry has long been bent on killing as many wolves as they can and creating a domesticated landscape safe for their docile and dim-witted animals,” said Erik Molvar, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project. “The absence of wolves across much of the West is in part responsible for wildlife diseases like chronic wasting disease and ecological imbalances we see today. We’re destroying the natural balance so that ranchers don’t have to keep an eye on their cows when they graze on public lands.”
