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Wolves protected again after excessive hunting

Wolves protected again after excessive hunting

DANIEL, Wyo. -- It's hard for ranchers here to figure how it came to this -- again.

After railing for more than a decade against the federal government for reintroducing gray wolves to the region, after finally winning the battle to get the animals taken off the endangered species list, what went so wrong that Washington stepped in last week to protect the wolves all over again?

It began near here in this high-altitude chaparral. No sooner were gray wolves delisted in March than sportsmen in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming began locking and loading. Wyoming officials declared 90 percent of the state a "free-fire zone." Hunters from around the state flocked to rural Sublette County to bag a wolf.

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Rancher Merrill Dana, 57, saw the results right away. Hunters aboard snowmobiles chased wolves across the early-spring snow on his sprawling ranch. "The first morning it was opened up, they killed three up here," he said. "Trespassers."

Mr. Dana said he has been offered as much as $2,500 for permission to hunt wolves on his land. He refused.

As with many ranchers here, there is no love lost between Mr. Dana and wolves. He was mad that the interlopers hadn't asked permission to hunt. "I wanted people I know to get them," said Mr. Dana, who was among a hunting party that eventually killed a 110-pound male.

Through the early summer, an average of a wolf a day was being killed across the region. In all, at least 130 animals died since the delisting, or nearly 10 percent of the wolf population in the northern Rockies. Then, on July 21, a federal judge stopped the hunt. Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service capitulated and began the process to relist wolves.

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"People over-reacted," said cattle rancher John Robinette of Dubois, Wyo. "I don't think the policy was intended as: 'Go out and see how many wolves you can kill.' "

Mr. Robinette has lost cattle, horses and dogs to wolves. Even when the wolf was listed, he had a rare federal permit to shoot any wolf he saw on his 25,000 acres. But he said he was convinced that giving everyone that right would lead to needless and reckless slaughter.

"People went out all over the state shooting and bragging about it and putting pictures in the paper," Mr. Robinette said.

Among cattlemen, distaste for wolves is as broad and wide as the sagebrush plain that stretches in all directions from Mr. Dana's ranch. Once hunted nearly to extinction, the West's most-reviled predator roams freely here, coming down to these khaki-colored valleys from nearby national forests in search of elk and the occasional cow or calf.

For the time being, at least, wolves in the northern Rockies are back on the endangered species list, while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reconsiders the issue. Federal officials are monitoring the wolf management programs in Montana and Idaho, which canceled its wolf hunt planned for September. In Wyoming, federal wildlife officials took over wolf management while a committee of the Wyoming Legislature crafts a new policy.

First Published: October 2, 2008, 1:15 p.m.

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