Q&A: Wolves Off The Endangered List In Eastern Oregon And Washington

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced Wednesday that gray wolves in the West will be coming off the Federal Endangered Species List Thursday.

That means wolf management will be handed over to the states – including Oregon, Washington and Idaho. But the rule only applies to the eastern third of Oregon and Washington.

The next question is what happens to wolves in the rest of the Pacific Northwest.

Here to talk about this issue is OPB's Ecotrope blogger Cassandra Profita.

Beth Hyams: I thought wolves were protected under the state Endangered Species Act. Does removing federal protection affect Oregon at all?

Cassandra Profita: Yes. Only under state management can ranchers in eastern Oregon get permits to kill problem wolves. The cattlemen are looking forward to having that option.

Under federal management, only officials could kill them. That's after they've tried non-lethal ways of keeping wolves from killing livestock – things like flagging and electric fencing.

Conservation groups are worried that Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will now be under pressure to authorize more wolf kills. So, I think one of the changes we'll see is more of the politics of protecting wolves versus protecting livestock. The two wolves U.S. Fish and Wildlife was planning to kill in northeast Oregon will be a case in point.

Beth Hyams: What's happening with that plan?

Cassandra Profita: I checked with Josh Laughlin with Cascadia Wildlands. His group is one of the four that are trying to keep managers from killing the wolves. He told me the decision to kill them will now be in the state's hands.

Josh Laughlin:  "The federal government has agreed to forego lethal removal of these wolves and agreed to let the states proceed. We're a little nervous about the traps remaining out there, but we've been assured those traps won't be used to kill the wolves only to collar them."

Beth Hyams: Will the feds be completely out of the wolf management in Oregon from now on?Cassandra Profita: No. And this is where Oregon and Washington are unique. The delisting decision only applies to roughly the eastern third of Oregon and Washington. Beyond that line the rules are less defined.

The state will not have authority over wolves outside that range. And federal managers announced they're doing a status review of wolves in the other two-thirds of Oregon and Washington - in the region they call the Pacific Northwest.

Chris Tollefson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service explained why they need to do a status review.

Chris Tollefson: "We needed to have better information about what was happening with wolves in those areas if there were wolves. If there were wolves what the status was, what the population was what the genetic makeup of those entities was to find out if there was anything there that would be a listable entity under the endangered species act."

Beth Hyams: It sounds like there may be wolves in other parts of Oregon that need protection under the federal Endangered Species Act?

Cassandra Profita: There could be. The status review is supposed to wrap up by the end of the year, and by then we'll know more.

In Oregon, this review could be important should wolves in the eastern portion of the state wander over into the Cascades. There have already been some unconfirmed sightings there. But there's a big stake in this for Washington State. They already have confirmed wolves in the Cascade Range that came from British Columbia.

Wolf advocates there are hoping a listing decision would stop people from poaching those wolves. And it would separate the wolf issues in the Northwest from the ones we've heard so much about in Montana and Idaho.