Deal on Mexican Gray Wolf

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists reached an agreement Friday that scraps a rule the agency had used to kill or permanently remove any wolf that killed three head of livestock in a year. A spokesman for the agency, Tom Buckley, said the three-strikes rule would “no longer stand.” The agency has other ways to deal with livestock kills “and remains committed to assisting the local livestock operators in any negative impacts they may have related to wolves,” Mr. Buckley said. Environmentalists argued that the rule favored the ranching industry and was a major roadblock to the population recovery effort for the Mexican gray wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf. Ranchers said the policy was aimed at wolves that grow accustomed to preying on cattle. Several environmental groups sued in May 2008, asking a federal court in Arizona to stop the removal policy. Mr. Buckley said agency officials hoped a judge would sign the settlement this week...read more

The Center For Biological Diversity press release is here and the Arizona Game & Fish Department's response says:

The press release sent by the plaintiff organizations is misleading in that AMOC is not and never has been the deciding authority on whether or not a wolf stays in the wild. AMOC reviews situations in which management response is needed and when removal is one of the options considered makes recommendations based on an approved procedure and forwards those recommendations to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Prior to 2008 the USFWS Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator, per the 1998 final rule, made the final decision on removal. Since then, the Region 2 director of the USFWS has consulted on such recommendations with the directors of the other five lead agencies participating in AMOC, but ultimately is the sole deciding authority on wolf removal.