杏吧原创

Santa Cruz

THE wolves of Yellowstone National Park have been given an eviction order. A
federal judge ruled last week that the thriving population, painstakingly
reintroduced by the US Fish and Wildlife Service over the past three years,
violates the service鈥檚 own regulations and must be removed.

Yellowstone鈥檚 grey wolves had been designated an 鈥渆xperimental population鈥� to
defuse some of the controversy surrounding their reintroduction, meaning that
they do not enjoy the same protection under the Endangered Species Act as their
naturally occurring brethren. Ranchers whose herds are threatened by the wolves
can shoot the animals.

Fish and Wildlife Service regulations
require that experimental populations must not overlap with native ones. But
since native wolves from farther north occasionally stray into the Yellowstone
area鈥攖hough not yet into the park itself鈥擩udge William Downes of the
US District Court in Casper, Wyoming, ruled the population illegal, and ordered
its removal.

The victory came as a shock even to some of the groups that challenged the
experimental designation. 鈥淲e think that was a terrible remedy,鈥� says Jim
Angell, an attorney for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in Bozeman, Montana,
which had hoped that the judge would bestow full protection on the Yellowstone
wolves.

But the environmental group鈥檚 unlikely partner in the lawsuit, a coalition of
ranchers鈥� interests, is delighted. In the long run, however, they may also be
losers, since biologists expect wolves to recolonise Yellowstone on their own
within a few decades鈥攁nd when they do, they will carry the full protection
of the Endangered Species Act.