Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Appeals panel leery of wolf issue

Wyoming: Judges, meeting in SLC, indicate management challenge may have to wait
By Joe Baird
The Salt Lake Tribune

The state of Wyoming is spoiling for a fight with the federal government in the wake of a rejection of its wolf management plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But an appeals court panel, convened in Salt Lake City on Monday, indicated that the state may have to wait to press forward with its challenge.

Attorneys representing Wyoming and a coalition opposed to the expanded presence of wolves in the state told a trio of judges from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that they considered the January 2004 rejection of the state's wolf plan "a final agency action." That, in turn, should allow Wyoming to move on with its complaint challenging the decision, they said.

But the appeals court panel appeared skeptical of the claim, noting that the FWS had not yet completed its status review of the Wyoming plan, nor had it yet sought public comment on the proposal.

"You may be upset that it's a peek into the mind of their decision-making process," said Judge David Ebel, "but it is possible they could still change their mind, is it not?"

The FWS has sought wolf management plans from Wyoming, Idaho and Montana as part of a proposal to remove the wolf from the list of endangered species, a designation that prompts special protections. The agency approved Montana's and Idaho's plans; it rejected Wyoming's, essentially because the state has proposed managing the wolf as a predator.

Utah wildlife officials, who were not required to submit a wolf plan but are planning for the wolf's return to the Beehive State, last year crafted a hotly debated voluntary management plan which hews more closely to the Wyoming proposal than the other two states.

Harriett Hageman, representing the Wyoming Wolf Coalition, argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service has "substantially changed" its wolf management requirements for Wyoming, enlarging the scope of the program from the Yellowstone ecosystem - where wolves were reintroduced in 1995 - to take in the entire state. Such a change, she argued, violated the National Environmental Policy Act.

U.S. Department of Justice attorney David Shilton told the appeals court that the FWS position on the Wyoming wolf management proposal does "look very firm." But he too argued that the state's complaint against the agency was premature.
"The agency wasn't acting in a regulatory sense, but in an advisory sense," Shilton said. "The fact that Wyoming is going to have to wait a little longer is of no legal consequence."

Abigail Dillen, an attorney for Earthjustice, which has intervened in the case, says Wyoming appears more interested in scoring rhetorical points than finding solutions to the wolf issue.

"They've had the power to get an up or down decision on this for years, and instead they have continued to inject politics into it," Dillen said after the hearing. "Is Wyoming really serious about this, or are they just going to continue to complain? The question is, do they want a state management plan or not?"

  • Salt Lake Tribune
  • 0 Comments:

    Post a Comment

    << Home