Judge Winmill: Government must reconsider giving the sage grouse protection under the ESA

Talk about a blockbuster decision!

Once again Julie MacDonald’s corrupt procedures at Interior have rebounded. The lawsuit was filed by Western Watersheds Project, and was represented by the conservation law firm, Advocates for the West.

Story by Rocky Barker in the Idaho Statesman. Judge: Government must reconsider sage grouse

I see where this is the big, or a big story, in most of the western newspapers on Dec. 5.

I wonder if the Bush Administration will ever figure out there are consequences to not obeying the law?

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Update. Statement from the Western Watersheds Project

Western Watersheds Project Wins Court Order Overturning Bush Administration Decision Not To List Greater Sage Grouse !

Tuesday December 4, 2007

Defenders statement on stakeholders.

Defenders of Wildlife sent out the news release below November 26, 2007 because Idaho and Fish and Game was saying that they were part of the “stakeholders” and strongly implying that they, therefore, had actually helped build the wolf population plan and agreed with it. I imagine that Fish and Game did this because it was politically helpful to suggest that only a handful of conservation groups opposed what is actually a very unbalanced plan. In fact, I think all do.

Ralph Maughan

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To: Northern Rockies editorial page editors and writers
Fr: Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife, (208)424-9385
Re: Idaho’s wolf harvest plan will decimate wolf population

Datet: November 26, 2007

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On Thursday, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game will hold its first public open house on a just-released wolf harvest plan intended to go into effect once wolves in the Northern Rockies are removed from the endangered species list. Unfortunately, this plan is more about extermination than management.

The plan’s primary goal is to reduce Idaho’s wolf population and would allow hundreds of the wolves currently in the state to be killed. This goal was not accepted by all of the stakeholder groups.

While Idaho Fish and Game claims the plan was accepted by all stakeholders, that is simply not true. Defenders of Wildlife and the Idaho Conservation League were two of the stakeholder groups that openly disagreed with the state’s management direction.

IDFG Wolf Plan public meeting - Jerome

The first in a series of Idaho Department of Fish & Game public meetings on Idaho’s Wolf Management Plan took place in Jerome last night. The plan, IDFG maintains, is the result of a series of stakeholders’ meetings that included Livestock interests, sporting interests - including Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, and conservation interests represented by the Idaho Conservation League and Defenders of Wildlife.

There is no measure of the restorative niche that this predator contributes throughout Western ecosystems planned to be taken by IDFG, nor does the wolves’ important role inform management in any way other than to trip measures of “control”. State management’s posture maintains wolves as problematic and seemed to pay little heed to any interest other than Livestock and big docile game. Even in maintaining 10 - 15 packs in the state, the motive was characterized in terms of protecting Livestock and big game interests from future federal protection of wolves.