Groups file lawsuit to restore endangered species protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies | OUT WEST ROUNDUP

WYOMING

Groups file lawsuit to protect wolves in Northern Rockies

CHEYENNE — Six conservation groups have filed a lawsuit challenging a recent federal decision not to protect wolves in the northern U.S. Rocky Mountain region under the Endangered Species Act, arguing that states are taking too much discretion to keep the predators to a minimum.

The groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the agencies’ directors in federal court in Missoula, Montana, on July 2.

The lawsuit follows a decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service in February to deny requests by conservationists to restore protections for endangered species in the region. Wolves are not in danger of extinction as states seek to reduce their numbers through hunting, the agency found.

The decision not to return wolves to endangered status in the region violates the Endangered Species Act by failing to properly assess the threats to wolves and relying on the best available science about the animals, the six organizations wrote in their lawsuit.

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The lawsuit criticizes state wolf management programs in the region. Montana and Idaho plan to drastically reduce wolf numbers, while Wyoming allows wolves to be killed outside of a designated hunting area using various methods, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit detailed how a Wyoming man hit a wolf on a snowmobile last winter, taped its mouth shut and took it to a bar before killing it. The killing led to widespread condemnation, but only a $250 fine for illegal possession of wildlife under Wyoming law.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit filed by Animal Wellness Action; the Center for a Humane Economy; Project Coyote, a project of the Earth Island Institute Inc.; the Kettle Range Conservation Group; Footloose Montana; and the Gallatin Wildlife Association.

Wolves have been protected as endangered in the region intermittently since their initial delisting in 2008. They were first listed in 1974, and populations were successfully reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho in the mid-1990s.

UTAH

3 hikers die in temperatures above 30 degrees

SALT LAKE CITY — Three hikers have died in suspected heat-related cases in Utah state and national parks in early July, including a father and daughter who became lost during a grueling hike in Canyonlands National Park in temperatures above 90 degrees.

The 23-year-old daughter and her 52-year-old father texted 911 to alert dispatchers that they were lost and out of water while hiking the 8.1-mile Syncline Loop, described by the National Park Service as the most challenging trail in the southeastern Utah park’s Island in the Sky district. The pair set out July 12 to negotiate steep switchbacks and scramble through boulder fields with limited trail markings as air temperatures soared to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Park rangers and a Bureau of Land Management helicopter crew began searching for the missing hikers in the early evening of July 12, but found them dead. The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office identified them on July 15 as Albino Herrera Espinoza and his daughter, Beatriz Herrera, of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Their deaths were being investigated as heat-related.