Wolves

Good news on the environmental front, in spite of the Bush administration:

In his ruling, Molloy said the federal government had not met its standard for wolf recovery, including interbreeding of wolves between the three states to ensure healthy genetics.

"Genetic exchange has not taken place," Molloy wrote in the 40-page decision.

Molloy said hunting and state laws allowing the killing of wolves for livestock attacks would likely "eliminate any chance for genetic exchange to occur."

2000 individuals spread over the immense area represented by the northern Rockies in this country is not a strong population -- in fact, it represents a highly vulnerable population. And the ranchers' perennial complaint that the worlves are killing livestock is a little sketchy: if you know anything about how livestock are managed in the West, you know that they are let out to graze and pretty much ignored, with minimal protection, if any. Losses may or may not be due to wolves -- they are just as credibly ascribed to dogs, whether feral or not: dogs are often allowed to roam free in the West, and will kill anything.

Another problem revealed by this story:

The federal biologist who led the wolf restoration program, Ed Bangs, defended the decision to delist wolves as "a very biologically sound package."

"The hunting of wolves clearly wouldn't endanger threatened wolf populations," Bangs said Friday. "We felt the science was rock solid and that the delisting was warranted."

The problem? This man speaks for the administration and has no credibility. That's the price of politicization.