Judge Orders Northeast Wolf Restoration

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2005/aug/19/081908632.html

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A federal judge Friday ordered the Bush administration to step up efforts to restore the gray wolf to four northeastern states, a ruling environmentalists called a major victory.

"The wolves are howlin'" in celebration, said Patrick Parenteau, director of the environmental law clinic at Vermont Law School.

Judge J. Garvan Murtha found that the Department of the Interior violated federal law in 2003 when it issued a rule saying no further efforts to restore the wolf were needed. The ruling covers Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York state.

Efforts to restore wolves had been successful in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The government wanted to lump those states in with the Northeast in a new, 21-state eastern region, and declare that enough had been done to restore wolf populations throughout the eastern United States.

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[Big Kahuna]

1. Cool! :)

[livetohike]

2. Good news

Thanks for posting this. :-)

[happyslug]

3. Did you see the quote from the US Fish and Wildlife?

"Anthony Tur, a Fish and Wildlife Service field officer in Concord, N.H. ...... He questioned the push to build gray wolf populations in the Northeast......there was dispute in the scientific community about whether gray wolves ever populated the region."

DISPUTE!!!! What dispute, all of the colonies reported Wolf populations as did the early French explorers and settlers.

[Viking12]

4. May not have been gray wolves, but another sub-species.

Side note on the OP: Minnesota never had a restoration program. The wolf population was protected and has since flourished, but there was no restoration necessary.

[jpak]

5. You are correct - there's a controversy over what "wolf"

actually inhabited New England during the pre-European period.

But there is no controversy regarding the presence of wolves in New England during the Colonial period and their extirpation from the region in the mid-19th Century.

This sort of dissembling by opponents of endangered species restoration has been going on for decades and should be expected from the Bush regime...

[happyslug]

6. Using DNA the red wolf of the American South was declassified.

Based on DNA studies it is now believed that the Red Wolf was a Coyote/Wolf hybrid not a separate species of Canine. Efforts are still being made to preserve it for it is the last remaining DNA of what ever sub-species of wolf was native to the American South. The main reason for the Resistance to the idea that the Red Wolf is NOT a separate species is that the Government may cut funding for research on the Red Wolf and the research is needed to better understand the Red Wolf, the Gray wolf and even Coyotes.

Web Sites:
http://www.canids.org/PUBLICAT/CNDNEWS3/2conserv.htm
http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/red_wolf.html
http://www.cnrhome.uidaho.edu/default.aspx?pid=78484

Canadian Cite saying some Eastern Canadian wolves are Red Wolf-Gray Wolf hybrids:
http://www.wildlifetech.com/pages/necoyote.htm

For a web cite saying the Red Wolf is a Distinct species:
http://www.yotor.com/wiki/en/re/Red%20Wolf.htm
http://www.kerwoodwolf.com/RED.htm

Other "Wolf" Sites:
http://www.kerwoodwolf.com/WOLFINFORMATION.htm