Audubon lawsuit shames national conservation group

By Don Jordan

The lawsuit that resulted in a federal judge's order to remove the gray wolves transplanted from Canada into Yellowstone National Park and wild parts of central Utah was originally started by the Farm Bureau on behalf of member ranchers and logging companies. But according to the founder of the Wolf Fund the decision never would have happened had it not been for a Sierra Club lawyer and the National Audubon Society which joined the removal lawsuit on the Farm Bureau's side.

How can this be? How can lovers of pristine wilderness and wild things of all kinds join forces with the forces of destruction? How could an outfit like Audubon join a lawsuit that could result in an open season of all the wolves (about 200 of them) and their offspring?

"The government has no choice but to undertake an all-out killing program that will most likely include shooting, trapping, poisoning and gassing. This program will repeat the massacre of wolves that led to their extermination 70 years ago," Renee Askins told members of the Outdoor Writers Association of America..

Here's how the current sad state of affairs arose. First, the Dept. of Interior used a provision of the Endangered Species Act called "10(j)" to reintroduce the wolves. This provision classified the transplanted animals as a "nonessential, experimental population." Under this classification, ranchers can shoot any wolf in the act of killing their livestock. Using this provision was mainly a public relations move to mollify the Farm Bureau.

This where the Audubon Society enters the picture. They joined with the Farm Bureau in challenging the "10(j)" provision under which the wolves were reintroduced. Audubon's attorney, former Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund lawyer Doug Honnold, argued that since existing populations of "fully endangered" wolves in northern Montana and Canada might show up in the transplant areas and be killed as transplants.

"In the end the plaintiffs' (Audubon) lofty motives to protect the ESA resulted not in protecting the ESA, but in harming what the ESA protects. In pursuing the letter of the law they deeply violated the spirit of the law," argued Askins whose organization is said to be "largely responsible" for wolf reintroduction success at Yellowstone. "There are few cases that so clearly illustrate the high-minded conservationist's penchant for missing the forest for the trees or winning the battle but losing the war."

Yet another irony in the legal wrangling is that if the judge's order to remove the wolves is upheld in appeal, the rancher members of the Farm Bureau will probably be sorry they "won" this one. Why? Because if the "10(j)" provision is struck, all non-transplanted, migrating wolves will be fully protected under the ESA. Since there is evidence that some migrating animals have already joined the transplants and mated with them, their offspring are likely to receive full protection.

"The presence of these fully endangered wolves can close grazing leases, timber sales and roads. Because they are 'fully endangered' the wolves dispersing from Canada and northern Montana can kill livestock with virtual impunity. If the judge's ruling stands, the Farm Bureau won't have 10(j), it won't have good will, it won't have compensation (losses caused by transplants are paid for by Defenders of Wildlife), but it will have wolves, a few less than right now, but not for long. Wolves from northern Montana are in central Idaho and Yellowstone and they will breed. Furthermore, if this order goes forward and the more than 200 reintroduced wolves and their puppies are killed because of this lawsuit, the American Farm Bureau will be subject to national rage that will make the criticism and boycott of Alaska over aerial wolf killing look like a gentle reprimand. Good luck folks, you'll be looking for jobs, not wolves."

"After enduring our arrogance and intervention, our dart guns and chainlink, our ear tags and radio collars, they (the transplanted wolves) are now faced with the consummate act of human hubris-a second extermination from our nation's oldest national park," she noted.

Considering that tens of thousands of people have gone to Yellowstone specifically to see the wolves and that hundreds of thousands of people have written letters supporting the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, it will be only politically expedient to support killing all the wolves in parts of Utah and Montana.

Everyone has a stake in this fight, and as Askins says, to say nothing is to support killing all the transplanted wolves and their puppies. Call or write your political representatives and write to your local newspaper or have blood on your hands too.

For more information, contact Tim Stevens: tstevens@desktop.org

Posted 3/4/98...indy

Copyright, 1998. Jordan Communications