Judge sides with Wyoming on wolves

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wasn't justified in rejecting Wyoming's wolf management plan. In his decision, U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson didn't require Fish and Wildlife to accept Wyoming's plan. However, he stated that the agency's insistence that Wyoming list wolves as a protected "trophy game" species throughout the entire state was "arbitrary and capricious" and should be set aside. Fish and Wildlife, Johnson ruled, should revisit whether Wyoming's proposed trophy game management area in the state’s northwest corner is adequate to maintain a healthy wolf population, or whether the state’s proposed boundaries should be expanded. The state of Wyoming sued Fish and Wildlife after the federal agency refused to accept the state’s plan, which would allow unregulated killing of the animals over all but the northwest part of the state. Currently, all of Wyoming’s wolves are listed as a federally endangered species, meaning it’s unlawful to kill wolves anywhere in the state. Fish and Wildlife had argued that Wyoming’s plan was rejected because unregulated shooting in most of the state would reduce the state's wolf population below federally required levels and wouldn’t give those wolves enough "genetic connectivity" with other wolf populations to maintain a healthy population. But Johnson rejected Fish and Wildlife's argument, writing that "there is no meaningful scientific explanation" why Wyoming’s plan would be insufficient to keep the state’s wolf population above those required levels of 15 breeding pairs and 150 total wolves...more