Folks might be getting confused as to all the wolf bills that have been introduced into the current Wyoming legislature, move and bit, and then die.
Now another one is moving in the Wyoming state senate. This is the last week of the legislative session.
This, like the others, is most likely to be rejected by the US Fish and Wildlife Service if it becomes state law. It is yet another bill that would restrict wolves to a tiny area in Wyoming and take a completely hostile approach to wolves in general.
Story in the Casper Star Tribune. [State] Senate trims wolf management area. By Ben Neary.
Update. Feb. 28. Wyoming Senate passes wolf control bill; House up next. Billings Gazette.
CHEYENNE – The Wyoming Senate on Tuesday approved a wolf management plan that calls for giving the governor’s office authority to negotiate with the federal government over the boundaries of a permanent wolf area in the northwestern corner of the state.
. . . .
On Monday, the Senate had voted to exclude most private land from a permanent management area in which wolves would be managed as trophy game animals. Outside that area, they would be managed as predators that could be shot on sight.
Mitch King, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver, had said Monday that any reduction of the management area his agency had proposed last fall would be unacceptable. He said a reduction would lead to his agency rejecting a state wolf management plan.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He has been a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and also its President. For many years he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
