A sly fox's take on Idaho wolves

Rocky Barker writes in the Idaho Statesman:

Moscow Republican Sen. Gary Schroeder has been getting a lot of heat for his bill that would authorize the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to offer Idaho's surplus wolves to any state that will take them. Schroeder, a fur trader, hung a wolf pelt on the wall of the Senate Environment and Resources Committee hearing room Monday when he introduced the bill just to show he meant business. Under his bill, Fish and Game will send letters to other states asking them if they wanted any wolves. The strategy he espoused is that if other states won't take our extra wolves, we will have no choice but to open a hunting season or, if necessary, to allow federal agents to kill them. But Schroeder, that white-haired fox, really has another strategy, and it's aimed at the anti-wolf leaders in the state who want to pick a fight we cannot win with the federal government. When a federal judge reversed the Bush administration's delisting of wolves in the Northern Rockies, anti-wolf forces across the West sought a response that would put the pro-wolf forces, the states and the federal government on the defensive. The Montana Shooting Sports Association drafted a bill that challenges federal authority to force wolves on the state. The Montana bill, which has since been introduced in the Legislature, would void the state's cooperative management agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and void its wolf management plan. It also would declare that the wolves now in the state were out of compliance with state wolf policy, and any efforts to arrest people for killing wolves in the state would be a crime with a jail sentence. A similar bill may come in Idaho this year. But this battle has been fought and lost already...