by Idaho Governor C. L. “Butch” Otter
Photo credit Karl Umbriaco/Shutterstock.com
For more than twenty years now I have had a front-row seat to one of the worst natural resources policies ever inflicted upon the West.
I was Idaho’s lieutenant governor in the mid-1990s when—like a shotgun wedding—Canadian gray wolves were “reintroduced” to the Idaho backcountry by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, expressly against our wishes as a state. I was a member of Congress in the early years of the twenty-first century as those transplanted predators grew into voracious packs that began ravaging our elk herds and terrorizing our livestock. So when I became Idaho’s governor in 2007, one of my top priorities was working with our congressional delegation, sportsmen, ranchers, and many others—including Ted Lyon—to overcome the legal hurdles set up by environmental extremists and activist judges to states wresting management of these big marauders from federal bureaucrats.
Ted’s book, The Real Wolf, does a compelling job of chronicling that process, and why it remains so important to those of us—no matter our political affiliation—who care deeply about states’ rights and responsible stewardship of our public lands, wildlife, and other resources. The hard-won experience of too often being at the mercy of that federal fiat we call the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has taught us the value of on-the-ground collaboration, consensus building, and counting on the real-world perspectives of those who live with the outcomes of our public policies.
There have been few issues during my forty years in public life that have provoked the raw passions of so many people from around the world as the debate over wolves.
As Idaho sought to at least control the carnage, I was deluged with some of the nastiest, most disparaging, and truly hateful letters, emails, and phone calls from well-meaning but badly misinformed folks. Most saw wolves only as big, beautiful dogs—harmlessly pursuing their majestic lives in the trackless wild. They argued that wolves are an essential and misunderstood part of the Rocky Mountain ecosystem, and we owe it to our western heritage to enable them to once again roam freely in the Idaho wilderness.
The problem is that wolves don’t stay put. Their enormous range, high reproductive rate, and insatiable hunger inevitably draw them out of the backcountry into the areas of men. As their numbers in Idaho spiraled far beyond expectations, so did the conflicts, and so did my determination to manage wolves as we do any other species—with an eye toward the bigger picture of a balanced ecosystem that includes man.
Getting to that point was challenging. While my state officially met the federal ESA recovery objectives for wolves in Idaho in 2002, we would not see final delisting for nearly a decade. And the conflicts continued to increase. Depredation grew, and state wildlife officials began noticing significant declines in Idaho deer and elk herds. In many of those areas, wolves were found to be a primary limiting factor for failure to achieve big-game population goals. That was simply unacceptable, so my staff and I continued working to wrench more management flexibility from the federal government’s clutches.
We eventually won a few concessions under the government’s “non-essential, experimental population” rules, allowing us to move or kill offending wolves. That was welcome, but full delisting was the real goal. However, frivolous legal actions by activist groups delayed those efforts despite the ESA’s stated goal of transferring management authority to states once a species has been deemed biologically “recovered.”
Ultimately—and after consistent pestering from many others and me—Congress got fed up with the delay tactics and took the unprecedented step of legislatively delisting wolves in Idaho and Montana. If not for that action, wolf management in Idaho still would be up to a pack of federal bureaucrats.
I’m grateful to Ted and the many good people who feel a strong affinity for Idaho, Montana, and the other states where wolves are yet another government-imposed challenge to overcome. But our friends in Wyoming continue struggling to gain state control over wolves, and wildlife managers in Arizona and New Mexico cope with deep mistrust of federal wolf “experts.” Officials in the state of Washington, where some Idaho wolves have migrated, are dealing with angry public outcry and even death threats for merely testing a plan for removing problem wolves—a plan which was agreed upon by a diverse collaborative group of local stakeholders.
Even folks in the Great Lakes states now are looking to Idaho for help breaking through the gridlock. My advice to them: when bureaucratic delays and environmentalist roadblocks prevent the ESA from working as it was intended, get Congress involved.
It’s not a perfect solution, but seeking congressional relief can be an effective response to the efforts of ersatz conservationists who speak floridly about the primal necessity of having wolves in our midst.
For them, the real goal is raising money and disrupting or shutting down such traditional multiple uses of public lands as grazing, logging, mining, and especially hunting.
It’s a problem created by wolf advocates who repeatedly move recovery targets, forum-shop for sympathetic judges, collect millions of taxpayer dollars to pay their lawyers, and look for any opportunity to abandon their commitment to pay for losses to ranchers and sportsmen.
Ted, and many others who recognize that reality, fought tough odds to turn the tide on the wolf issue. Now Idaho and Montana are managing wolves—wolves that never should have been here in the first place. But since they are, the good news is that the people most impacted by their presence now are managing them in a way that’s far more balanced and reflective of the realities of today’s West.
They will never be “our wolves,” but at least now we have a primary role in controlling their population and impacts.
In some ways, the painful process of wolf introduction has been the canary in the smoldering coalmine that is the Endangered Species Act. Transplanting wolves to Idaho was precursor to a myriad of other ESA-related dustups throughout the Northern Rockies.
Take the greater sage-grouse. Western governors were invited by the Obama administration in 2011 to develop our own grassroots plans for conserving this iconic western species on federal lands. My goal was to develop a strategy that protected the bird without an ESA listing, while maintaining traditional land-use activities. But after crafting a plan that was endorsed by our local federal partners, bureaucrats at the Interior Department in Washington, DC, disregarded our local efforts and opted instead for an unnecessary, more restrictive one-size-fits-all approach across multiple western states.
While the greater sage-grouse was not listed, what we ultimately got was an overly restrictive federal protection plan that I continue to challenge in court.
The Yellowstone grizzly bear population is another example of bureaucracy run amok. Due to the efforts of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, Yellowstone’s grizzlies were biologically recovered more than a decade ago. But lawsuits heard by activist judges have delayed the handover of management to the states.
In 2011, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that the states had adequate plans and safeguards in place to assume full management of the bear population. But despite that decision, the Fish and Wildlife Service is holding final delisting hostage unless states adhere to new and added delisting requirements that undermine state sovereignty.
Many other governors share my frustrations. In fact, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead and the Western Governors’ Association recently spearheaded an initiative to explore areas of the ESA that are in desperate need of overhaul. The focus is on areas where states can become fully vested partners in conservation and recovery of threatened or endangered species.
After all, it is the states, by way of the Constitution, that have authority over all fish and wildlife within their borders. It’s the states that have the biological expertise and the working relationships with those most impacted by conservation decisions that enable us to be the better stewards of our fish and wildlife.
It’s my sincere hope that The Real Wolf will help open some eyes to the bigger problems with the Endangered Species Act—a once well-intentioned but incredibly flawed law that undermines the real interests and values of conservation by placing the well-being of humans and their livelihoods far down the food chain.
It’s time we claw our way back up! Reading Ted’s outstanding book is a great start.