Page 9 - Wyoming's Grizzly Harvest - The Story the State Wants to Bury with the Bears

Wyoming’s Grizzly Harvest day, federal court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, returned Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections to wolves in Wyoming. “The Game and Fish Department believes in our sound management of wolves over the last two years,” bemoaned Talbott, in the wake of the decision. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the feds’ “Grizzly Bear Czar,” Chris Servheen, didn’t make it through that week unscathed either. Judge Berman Jackson ruled that FWS was “arbitrary and capricious” in accepting Wyoming’s “nonbinding promises” of “minimum management targets” of a mere ten breeding pairs and “one hundred individual gray wolves” beyond the borders of Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Indian Reservation post-delisting. Wyoming’s Mead-Talbott inspired wolf management plan committed only “to reasonably ensure” the minimum numbers. The judge found that wasn’t much of an assurance, given that within the first three months of Wyoming assuming control of the wolf from FWS, the state’s wolf population was gutted by 40%. In fall 2012, WGFD sold 4,492 wolf licenses to fill its “harvest” quota of fifty-two, “so open hunting seasons were set from October 1 to December 31, 2012.” 9