The Idaho wolf season has ended, but not really . . .
The day after Idaho’s 2011-12 wolf hunting season ended, some parts of the state started hunting for 2012-13.
Private lands in the state’s northern panhandle region are allowed to keep the pressure on wolves through the summer, according to Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Tony McDermott. The new season started Sunday, just after the June 30 ending of last year’s Idaho wolf hunt.
From today’s Missoulian . . .
With more than 150 wolves shot in the Northern Rockies so far this fall, a panel of federal judges on Tuesday is scheduled to consider an emergency halt to public hunts for the animals.
Congress cleared the way for the hunts last spring, when lawmakers took the unprecedented step of stripping Endangered Species Act protections from more than 1,300 wolves in Montana and Idaho.
Wildlife advocates sued to reverse the move and want the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to suspend the hunt while the case is pending. They claim Congress violated the Constitution’s separation of powers mandate by reversing prior court rulings that kept protections in place.
Here we go. Wolf hunting season opened in Idaho. Montana is next. From today’s Missoulian . . .
It’s open season for hunting wolves across much of Idaho’s backcountry.
The state’s second public hunt started Tuesday in the 13 separate hunting zones across the state.
From the Daily Inter Lake . . .
Environmentalists have asked a federal appeals court for an emergency injunction to halt wolf hunts scheduled to start in a few weeks in Idaho and Montana.
The request filed by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and other groups with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was made public Saturday. The groups want the hunts canceled until the court issues a decision in an appeal filed Monday challenging a federal judge’s ruling allowing the hunts to go forward.
From an AP article posted to the Missoulian’s web site . . .
Idaho wildlife policy makers could set wolf hunt quotas by August after Congress last month directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to delist the predators.
There are currently an estimated 705 wolves in Idaho in about 87 packs, but Idaho Department of Fish and Game plans to update that information this month at a meeting in Lewiston.
Idaho is already spooling up for a wolf hunt this year. No word from Montana yet . . .
Officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game plan to meet with Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter on Monday to discuss a public wolf hunting season.
“We will be ready to have another hunting season,” said Jim Unsworth, deputy director of Fish and Game.
A pretty good AP article posted to today’s Flathead Beacon . . .
An attachment to a federal budget bill needed to avert a government shutdown would take gray wolves off the endangered species list across most of the Northern Rockies.
Wildlife advocates conceded Tuesday the wolf provision was all but certain to remain in the spending bill after efforts to remove it failed. Congress faces a tight deadline on a budget plan already months overdue, and the rider has bipartisan support.
It orders the Obama administration to lift protections for wolves within 60 days in five Western states.
Protections would remain intact in Wyoming, at least for now.
It now looks very likely that wolves will be removed from the Endangered Species List. Late last night, Senators Tester and Baucus successfully placed a rider in the “must pass” budget bill that restores the 2009 U.S. Fish and Wildlife rule returning management of gray wolves to state-level control in Montana and Idaho. The rider also prevents judicial review of that rule.
In other words, it looks like there will be wolf hunt in Idaho and Montana this year.
Here’s the actual text of the rider, as posted to Sen. Jon Tester’s web site:
SEC. 1713. Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without regard to any other provision of statute or regulation that applies to issuance of such rule. Such reissuance (including this section) shall not be subject to judicial review and shall not abrogate or otherwise have any effect on the order and judgment issued by the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming in Case Numbers 09–CV–118J and 09–CV–138J on November 18, 2010.
From today’s Missoulian . . .
Wildlife advocates are scrambling to remove from the federal budget bill a provision that would lift protections for gray wolves in Montana and Idaho.
John Motsinger with Defenders of Wildlife said Monday his group would continue to fight the provision “until it’s a done deal.” But time is running out, with final language for the bill expected to be released Monday.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. I did check to make sure it was not posted on April 1st . . .
Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter says he likes what he sees in a bill that declares a wolf disaster state of emergency in Idaho.