Comment deadline nears on delisting gray wolf

The deadline to comment on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to remove all gray wolves from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act is May 14, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is rallying the troops. Once a species is on the list, it’s extremely hard to get it off, and cattlemen need to make sure the agency knows they support delisting, Colin Woodall, NCBA senior vice president of government affairs said. “We’ve been working about 20 years on this,” he said. As a listed species, gray wolves can’t be managed. That means ranchers “have to sit back and watch their animals be eaten and killed by these animals,” he said. In announcing its proposal to delist the species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service called the gray wolf recovery “one of the greatest comebacks for an animal in U.S. conservation history.” On the brink of extinction in the Lower 48 states, the species was listed as protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1974. Today, the population stands at more than 6,000 — and growing — across the northern portions of three states in the Great Lakes area and all or portions of five states in the northern Rocky Mountains...MORE