Wolves on comeback trail as US plea filed
Source: Agencies |
July 22, 2010, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
TENS of thousands of gray wolves would be returned to the woods of New England, the mountains of California, the wide open Great Plains and the desert West under a scientific petition filed on Tuesday with the United States federal government.
The predators were poisoned and trapped to near-extermination in the US last century, but have since clawed their way back to some of the most remote wilderness in the lower 48 states.
That recovery was boosted in the 1990s by the reintroduction of 66 wolves in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Yet as those first packs have flourished, increased livestock killings and declining big game herds have drawn sharp backlash from ranchers, hunters and officials in the Northern Rockies.
But biologists with the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity want to expand that recovery across the country. A few isolated pockets of wolves, they say, are not enough.
"If the gray wolf is listed as endangered, it should be recovered in all significant portions of its range, not just fragments," said Michael Robinson, who authored the petition. Robinson said the animals occupy less than 5 percent of their historic range in the lower 48 states.
The federal Administrative Procedure Act allows outside parties to petition the government to act when species are in peril.
US Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Chris Tollefson, whose agency received the petition, said there was no deadline by which the agency must respond to Tuesday's plea, which was signed by Robinson and another biologist, Noah Greenwald.
About 6,000 wolves live in the US outside Alaska, with most of those in the Great Lakes and Northern Rockies, with a few dozen in Arizona and New Mexico. They are listed as endangered except in Alaska, Idaho and Montana.
The predators were poisoned and trapped to near-extermination in the US last century, but have since clawed their way back to some of the most remote wilderness in the lower 48 states.
That recovery was boosted in the 1990s by the reintroduction of 66 wolves in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Yet as those first packs have flourished, increased livestock killings and declining big game herds have drawn sharp backlash from ranchers, hunters and officials in the Northern Rockies.
But biologists with the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity want to expand that recovery across the country. A few isolated pockets of wolves, they say, are not enough.
"If the gray wolf is listed as endangered, it should be recovered in all significant portions of its range, not just fragments," said Michael Robinson, who authored the petition. Robinson said the animals occupy less than 5 percent of their historic range in the lower 48 states.
The federal Administrative Procedure Act allows outside parties to petition the government to act when species are in peril.
US Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Chris Tollefson, whose agency received the petition, said there was no deadline by which the agency must respond to Tuesday's plea, which was signed by Robinson and another biologist, Noah Greenwald.
About 6,000 wolves live in the US outside Alaska, with most of those in the Great Lakes and Northern Rockies, with a few dozen in Arizona and New Mexico. They are listed as endangered except in Alaska, Idaho and Montana.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
