Barrasso blocks vote on nominee over wolves

For the past two weeks, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., has blocked the nomination of the new director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after the agency stalled on replying to state negotiators over a Wyoming wolf management plan. And Barrasso will continue to delay a Senate confirmation vote of Daniel Ashe as director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, even though the agency has again started communicating with state officials about a wolf deal, according to a congressional source. For years, Fish and Wildlife has refused to accept Wyoming’s state wolf management plan and remove the state’s roughly 300 wolves from the federal endangered species list. The state’s plan allows unregulated killing of the animals in all but the northwest corner of the state. Fish and Wildlife, on the other hand, wants wolves to be classified as “trophy game” throughout the state, meaning they could only be hunted with a license. During a meeting in Cheyenne with Gov. Matt Mead in late March, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar suggested a deadline of a month to reach an agreement on a management plan, said Mead spokesman Renny MacKay. Following the meeting, Wyoming’s wolf negotiators sent off a formal letter to Fish and Wildlife detailing the state’s position, MacKay said. But for the next 40 days or so, they got no reply. “They just weren’t talking to us,” MacKay said...more