Obama Freezes Pending Federal Rules, Wolves May
Benefit
WASHINGTON, DC, January 21, 2009 (ENS)
In one of his first presidential acts, President Barack Obama has ordered
federal agencies to halt all pending regulations until his administration
can review them.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel issued the memorandum Tuesday
shortly after Obama took the oath of office at noon on the steps of the
Capitol Building.
The freeze halts publication of federal regulations planned under the Bush
administration but not yet published in the Federal Register.
President George W. Bush used his executive powers to issue new regulations
before leaving office, a usual practice during transitions.
Wildlife conservationists say the freeze will delay and possibly prevent the
removal of gray wolves from the federal endangered species list in Montana,
Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, and also in portions of
Washington, Oregon, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois,
Indiana, and Ohio.
Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity says the pause will
afford President Obama and his new Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar the
opportunity to rethink the previous administration’s efforts to remove
wolves from the endangered species list.
Salazar, a fifth-generation Coloradan who served as the state’s U.S.
senator, attorney general and director of natural resources, was confirmed
Tuesday by a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate to head the Department of the
Interior, the nation’s largest land and wildlife conservation agency. He
started work in his new job this morning.
Gray wolf in the northern Rockies (Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service)
"Rather than remove protections from wolves in a piecemeal fashion, in the
isolated locations where they have finally begun to recover from past
persecution," Robinson said, "the Obama administration should develop and
implement a national gray-wolf recovery plan that will ensure the survival
of these magnificent animals."
On January 14, in what conservationists view as a last-ditch effort by the
Bush administration to undermine environmental protections, the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service announced that the Northern Rockies gray wolf will be
taken off the Endangered Species List.
Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said, "This
blatantly political maneuver is hardly surprising. The Bush administration
has been trying to strip Endangered Species Act protections from the
Northern Rockies wolf since the day it took office - no matter the dire
consequences of delisting wolves prematurely and without adequate state
protections in place."
Two previous attempts to remove protections from the wolves in the northern
Rocky Mountains have been struck down by federal courts.
"The Bush administration is forcing the future of wolves in the region to
play out in the courts by finalizing a delisting rule in its last hours in
office," Schlickeisen said. "We intend to challenge this poorly constructed
decision in court as soon as the law allows. It is outrageous that the Bush
administration has chosen to create this unnecessary legal problem for the
new Obama administration to deal with as it takes office."
Announcing the delisting, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett
said the success of gray wolf recovery efforts in the northern Rockies has
contributed to expanding populations of wolves that no longer require the
protection of the Act.
"Wolves have recovered in the Great Lakes and the northern Rocky Mountains
because of the hard work, cooperation and flexibility shown by States,
tribes, conservation groups, federal agencies and citizens of both regions,"
said Scarlett. "We can all be proud of our various roles in saving this icon
of the American wilderness."
But wildlife conservationists disagree. Gray wolves are gone from over 95
percent of their historic range, including on millions of acres of national
forests, national parks and Bureau of Land Management public lands whose
ecological health has suffered in the absence of wolves, conservationists
contend.
In the northern Rocky Mountains, wolf numbers are too low and populations
too fragmented to ensure long-term survival, Robinson says.
The Bush administration intended to delist wolves in Idaho and Montana even
though those states are inhabited by only 75 breeding pairs of wolves, far
below the hundreds of breeding animals wildlife scientists say are necessary
to maintain population viability without debilitating genetic problems.
Even these 75 breeding pairs are not secure since the Idaho and Montana
state wolf management plans allow for killing of wolves, including a
majority of the wolves in Idaho.
Schlickeisen said, "If allowed to stand, this rule would mean that the
Northern Rockies wolf population could be slashed by as much as two-thirds,
placing approximately 1,000 of the region’s roughly 1,450 wolves in peril.
This is a loss from which they most likely would be unable to recover."
The Fish and Wildlife Service and its predecessor agency were responsible
for the extermination of wolves throughout much of the 20th century on
behalf of the livestock industry.
Gray wolves survived in small numbers in the upper Midwest and expanded
under the protections of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Wolves began
recolonizing northern Montana and Idaho on their own in the 1980s, and
numbers grew significantly after the 1995 and 1996 reintroduction of wolves
to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.
Under an exception to the Endangered Species Act, Fish and Wildlife Service
actions have resulted in the federal killing on behalf of the livestock
industry of 931 wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains and at least 1,951
wolves in the Great Lakes region from 1996 through 2008.
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