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Wolves return to Oregon, cause a ruckus in Congress
NATURAL FOODS
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
t
o follow a certain Tea-Partyesque line
of thought: God created the animals,
Adam named the ones he was given
dominion over (the beasts of the fi eld and
such) and, with a quick leap forward to
the present day, Congress decides which
ones are no longer in danger of dying out
— wolves, for example.
Wolves are native to the western U.S.
and to Oregon, but they were extirpated
— hunted to local extinction — by the
late 1940s. The current northern Rockies
gray wolves are descendants of those that
crossed the border from Canada into Glacier
National Park as well as wolves that were
brought from Canada and reintroduced to
Yellowstone and Idaho. Genetic testing by
the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
shows eight of nine Oregon wolves tested
are from the Idaho pack.
While wolves in Oregon are still sparse
— there are only about 23 — they’ve made
a good recovery elsewhere in the West,
says Oregon State University wolf scholar
Cristina Eisenberg. Eisenberg, author of
The Wolf’s Tooth, says despite human fears
about wolves, the animals are actually
a “keystone species” in the ecosystem.
Removal of a top predator, like the wolf,
can cause a “trophic cascade” and trigger
effects on the rest of the system.
“Biodiversity plummets,” Eisenberg
says. Without wolves there are more elk,
which eat more streamside vegetation,
which affects the songbirds and butterfl ies
that live there, and the fi sh in the streams that
need the shade from the plants. Eisenberg
says that though the current Oregon wolves
may not be the exact subspecies that used to
live here, they are the same species and fi ll
the same important ecological niche.
Many wolf advocates were dismayed
this month when Democratic Sen. John
Tester of Montana inserted language into
the already controversial budget bill that
delisted wolves from federal Endangered
Species Act protections, returning their
management in Montana and Idaho to
those states, which would allow them to be
hunted.
The rider overrides a federal judge’s
decision forbidding this same delisting,
and it blocks judicial review of the decision
to withdraw the federal protections. The
fact that the delisting was a congressional
decision superseding the Endangered
Species Act raises hackles among
conservationists.
But Andy Stahl, executive director
of Forest Service Employees for
Environmental Ethics, says this is not the
fi rst time Congress has used a rider to
overturn environmental laws. “This tactic
used on the wolf this week is by no means
novel or unprecedented,” he says.
Stahl says, “Those with long memories
remember that Congress did overturn the
environmental laws in regard to spotted
owl.” He says that Oregon Sen. Mark
Hatfi eld, using his chairmanship of the
Appropriations Committee, removed all
protections for a one-year period around
1991. Stahl also points to the snail darter,
a small species of endangered fi sh that was
exempted from the ESA in order to build a
dam in Tennessee.
The consequences, Stahl says, “to the
wolves, the snail darter, the owl are all the
same: more dead owls, more dead wolves,
more dead snail darters.” The effects of the
rider aren’t yet set in stone — its wording
doesn’t prevent U.S. Fish and Wildlife
from relisting the wolf if it plummets and
faces extirpation, Stahl says.
“It’s somewhat remarkable how
thoroughly environmental interests lost,”
Stahl says. He points out that two of the
senators who pushed for delisting as
Congress and the White House began to
gear up for the 2012 elections, Tester and
Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, are from
states with wolf populations and are “two
freshman Democratic senators, almost an
endangered species themselves.” à
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EUGENE WEEKLY APRIL 21, 2011 17