YOU REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND THE NEWS

Post Register

Category: Commentary

Date: 01/18/1998

Headline: You really don't understand the news

Byline: Renee Askins

They may have won the first round in court, but critics of the wolf reintroduction program may live to regret this victory, writes Renee Askins.

The Dec. 12 order by Wyoming Federal Judge William Downes to remove reintroduced wolves and their offspring from Yellowstone and central Idaho may precipitate one of the century's most tragic and terrible acts of wildlife carnage. Canada won't take the wolves back. The most horrid of tortures to a wild wolf is long-term confinement, which in the case of 200 animals is hardly an option. The government has no choice but to undertake an all-out killing program that will most likely include shooting, trapping, poisoning and gassing.

The blood of those animals will be on all our hands, mine more than most because I worked for 15 years to bring these wolves to Yellowstone. Fortunately the judge stayed his own order, pending appeal. We must remember that there are many types of appeal - legal, emotional, ethical - and we all have the ability to influence the outcome of this situation by using our citizenry, our democracy and our justice.

To not act is to advocate the killing.

The irony lies in the identity and interests of the co-plantiffs, the American Farm Bureau and National Audubon Society, who brought the suit and whose actions resulted in this order.

First let's begin by looking at what happened. The government used a provision of the Endangered Species Act called ''10(j)'' as the vehicle for reintroducing wolves. They used 10(j) because it was geared to accommodate local concerns, particularly those like the Farm Bureau's.

Why the Farm Bureau is rejoicing is bewildering as they have more to lose than anyone, except the wolves.

If you're still cheering, boys, you really haven't understood the news. Wolves from the northern Montana population, which are classified as ''fully endangered,'' have already mated with reintroduced wolves from central Idaho. Likewise, it is probable that there are dispersers from northern Montana that have intermingled with Yellowstone's reintroduced wolves.

Wolves, reintroduced or not, are a magnet to other wolves. These ''fully endangered'' wolves, that have dispersed from Montana and Canada into the reintroduction areas, cannot be killed under the judge's order. Once 10(j) is rescinded the presence of these fully endangered wolves can close grazing leases, timber sales roads and, because they are ''fully endangered,'' they can kill livestock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.

But it will have wolves, a few less than we have 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 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.

Even more ironically, the judge's ruling was largely the result of arguments by ''conservationists'' Doug Honnold, formerly of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, now renamed The Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.

In the end Honnold's lofty motives to protect the Endangered Species Act resulted not in protecting the ESA, but harming what the ESA protects.

In pursuing the letter of the law he deeply violated the spirit of the law. Anyone who has worked with predators in the West knows that laws don't protect wolves, people protect wolves.

It should come as no surprise that the reintroduced wolves with lesser legal protection of the 10(j) provision in Yellowstone and central Idaho have a lower mortality rate than those in northern Montana and Idaho under full ESA protection. 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.

We all need to get involved in sorting this mess out and protecting the reintroduced wolves and their offspring, for they stand the most to lose. After enduring our arrogance and intervention, our dart guns and chain-link, our ear tags and radio collars, they are faced with the consummate act of human hubris - a second extermination from our nation's wilderness and oldest national park.

I participated in a project that might end in subjecting these animals to such a horrific fate. I stand accountable for that.

I hope the Farm Bureau, once it finishes its blind reveling over a perceived victory, might sober at the thought of a Farm Bureau-driven action that shoots, poisons, gasses and traps 200 wolves and their puppies.

I also hope that in the appeal, Honnold might use his considerable talent, and National Audubon its considerable clout, for more constructive ends: for example, the preservation of nearly 200 living, breathing, free-ranging wolves in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho and their right to a wild existence.

Askins worked on Yellowstone wolf recovery for 15 years. She founded and directed The Wolf Fund, which was disbanded, as promised, when wolves were released in Yellowstone in 1995. You can write to her at P.O. Box 471, Moose, WY 83012.