Wolf delisting provision gets attached to Republican version of the continuing budget resolution by Representative Mike Simpson (R-ID)

Delists wolves in Northern Rockies but leaves out Wyoming.

The GOP in the House of Representatives is starting to work on their version of a continuing budget resolution that would be needed to fund the government until a formal budget is passed to fund government agencies.  Another way to fund the government could come in the form of an omnibus spending bill until a formal budget is passed.  The Republicans have indicated that they do not support shutting down the government so funding must be appropriated by March 4th when the current continuing budget resolution expires.

The Senate will have its own version and there will likely be a big fight over any funding of the government. There are significant changes that could take place to any of these bills.

The wording of the language is as follows:

SEC. 1713. Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this division, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without regard to any other provision of statute or regulation that applies to issuance of such rule. Such reissuance (including this section) shall not be subject to judicial review.

If language like this passes wolves in Idaho, Montana, and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Utah would lose Endangered Species Act protections while those in Wyoming would retain protection.

GOP budget bill lifts wolf protections.
By MATTHEW BROWN – Associated Press

83 thoughts on “Wolf delisting provision gets attached to Republican version of the continuing budget resolution by Representative Mike Simpson (R-ID)

    1. Yes they can as long as it does not apply to the Constitution itself. Even then, there is an argument that they can.

      The Congress trumps the courts, legally speaking, in most instances. It is just that Congress usual does not do so.

      1. Isn’t the SC a next step if Congress gets out of hand? (Not that I expect the current bench to be sympathetic to anything that is good for the public’s interest in such matters.)

  1. I think i am not getting it. Bills are attached to the budget proposal and if budget is approved, the provisions are approved..is Obama even aware of this? How can you attach something not related to the budget to the budget proposal?

    1. Izabela,

      Stuff gets attached to bills that have nothing to do with the attachment all of the time, unfortunately it has become an American tradition, attach something that has little chance of passing on its own to a bill that is a must pass.

      Yes, Obama is aware of it as has been many Presidents in the past..this is nothing new..

      The bills attached are approved if the main bill is approved, we have no line item veto in this country.

    2. Izabela,

      At one time this agglomeration of unrelated items into a giant bill was an exception, though it was done once and a while. Now it is the way almost every bill passes.

      It almost completely avoids any responsibility for what happens. It has no virtues except otherwise nothing would pass in this time of partisan gridlock.

  2. Didn’t Conrad Burns attach a rider to a bill to make it legal to send wild horses to slaughter?

    1. Which bill, this is good news for the west. Will it allow US slaughter houses to be reopened?

      1. William,

        What should they do with them then? Do you have any expirience with them at all? I do, they are a pest, that per AUM are way worse than cattle.

      2. Ryan, I think horses deserve a chance. They are not livestock. I think first the Congress should pass a Federal Law banning the transport of horses over our borders. Let the rescue groups and horse advocates find homes for these horses. Sick horses should be humanely euthanized. Let the killer buyers that make a profit off the misery of these animals find another line of work. Rescue groups get outbid by the killer buyers because the demand in Japan and Belgium is great. I have seen plenty of video that demonstates how cruel this form of slaughter is. These animals know what’s coming.
        To answer your question I have owned three horses. Facts are the facts- people don’t want slaughterhouses in their communities. People many times give up their horses having no clue the animal will end up on a dinner plate

      3. Ryan, what you consider a pest, others consider horses to be native wildlife. Much more native than livestock.

      4. God did not put magnificent creatures like horses on earth to be eaten by humans. They deserve a right to live.

      5. William

        William

        In the 70’s and early 80’s my father owned up to 50 horses at a time, fine quarter horses and Belgium Mares. All of our horses were fed, wormed and when needed proper vet care . Sooner or later a horse would go lame, twist a gut, or age would not allow them to be ridden. What are you going to do with them? Sooner or later they are going to die. If a horse needs to be put down the drug cost over $200, most rural vets recommend shooting them. In those days the rendering plant would pick up the dead horse, today those plants do not exist.

        I fully support horse slaughter plants there are to many old and lame horses that have no use and eventually die anyway. This might be hard but that’s the way it is. This spring I am taking my horse to Billings unless I can give it away it will be sold to kill buyers; it’s 22 years old and can no longer carry me in the mountains. Sometime in the next several months myself and a mule trainer are going to find a 7 to 10 year old mule and both of us are going to be trained. Each to there own.

      6. Jon,

        As science has proven they are wrong, they are not native and they destroy the enviroment in areas where they are present. If you ever come west of the missippi, visit Kofa or Sheldon, both area where there is no live stock, just horses and see the damage.

        Will,

        Have you seen the damage wild horses do to the desert?
        If they don’t go to slaughter houses, they just get shot and left to rot when people cant get rid of them.

      7. Ryan, that’s bs! Where is this science you speak of? Everytime when a certain group of people don’t like particular animals, they claim they are non-native. You see the samething with animals like wolves and coyotes. People who don’t like wolves will constantly go on and on of how wolves are non native when infact they have been in North America for 750,000 according to experts. This is way before the white man ever landed in NA.

        http://newsblaze.com/story/20090718172136zzzz.nb/topstory.html

        Go ahead, claim this article is biased.

      8. “Three-and-a-half million years ago the now famous fossils found near Hageman, Idaho represent the oldest remains of the fully evolved genus Equus, roughly the size and weight of today’s Arabian horse. At this time the horse had not yet migrated across the Bering Strait Bridge.

        Bones found in South America from horses that had migrated from North America dated one million years ago appear indistinguishable from Equus caballus (the modern day domestic horse).

        DNA sequences taken from long bone remains of horses found preserved in the Alaskan permafrost deposits dated 12,000 to 28,000 years ago differ by as little as 1.2% from modern counterparts.

        When the Spanish brought the horse to America they were bringing him home. Back to his native land. Wearing the same genetics, the same DNA sequencing he was wearing when he left and when those left behind were wiped out.”

      9. 1.2% can and does have drastic implications when it comes to species similarities or differences

      10. Jon,

        You can’t possibly be this dense. You just posted an article stating that the horses on the north american continent are not the same species as what went extinct and are trying to use that as an argument to say that they are native..

    2. ProWolf in WY-
      Conrad Burns engineered a backdoor Congressional Rider in 2004 which gutted protections afforded the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. The BLM must sell excess horses 10 years or older that have not been adopted after 3 tries. The idiot killer buyers are there to outbid rescue groups because the meat sold to foreign diners in Belgium, Japan and the Far East is very lucrative and profitable. Burns and others are quick to say how “Humane” horse slaughter is which is a complete lie

      1. That’s the difference between me and you Elk 275. After an animal has served you well for a number of years instead of paying a one time final expense and let the animal go with dignity, or finding someone that would take the animal, you prefer to make money and subject that animal to a horrible death- what a sweetheart!!!!! I am nothing like you that’s for sure

  3. By Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s own publication, there are more elk in the northern Rocky Mts. now than there were 25 years ago; how does that equate to a “mounting toll.” Livestock losses to wolves are a mere fraction of cattle/sheep killed by every other predator out there, including domestic dogs. This notion that wolves are somehow “wreaking havoc” is a total crock. Why don’t these lawmakers devote their time to something worthwhile (child care, education, tax reform, helping home owners, saving Social Security, getting our troops out of Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.)?

    1. The rmef came out with numbers a while ago and if you look at the #s that they came out with, you’d tell yourself the elk are doing pretty good if you looking at the whole population. Hunters are angry because elk #s are down in certain areas. I mean this is something that should have been expected. Did hunters think that elk #s are going to be the same in certain areas with wolves back in the picture? Idaho fish and game says their elk population is around 103,000. The way some talk of wolves and their appetite for elk, you’d think elk #s would be much lower than that. I don’t know how much faith hunters will put in that 103,000 elk in Idaho #.

      1. Jon,

        We can also look at the wolf population and say as a whole, they are doing quite well.

      2. What really strikes me is that whether the wolf population in the NRM region is 2000 or 8000, elk numbers dwarf the wolf population. Throw in the remainder of the the western states that currently don’t have or have low wolf numbers and we’re talking, liberally, 3000 +/- wolves vs. 1,000,000 +/- elk and miniscule livestock losses.

        I am so tired of the nonsense. These states cannot be allowed to manage wolves. They will ultimately “manage” then into oblivion again. In regard to wolf “management”, there is not one rational voice coming out of the legislatures of Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho. I would like to believe that this is the death rattle of an intolerant western U.S. culture. If it is, it is not going down quietly.

        This is purely an attempted knockout blow to the ESA. I hope more level headed members of congress realize that the ESA and the natural history of the west represents more than just the interests of an irrational segment of “hunters” and livestock producers that will never be appeased.

        This development is a crock of B.S.

      3. Well Jon would you say a 18% decrease in wolf numbers would be fine? Let’s go wolf hunting!

        clarification: elk population estimates

        The front page story in the February issue of IdahoFish and Game News included elk population estimates that may be misleading.

        The estimated population in the mid-1990s of 125,000 elk is based on counts conducted in February 1997. The most recent estimate of 103,000 is based on elk counts conducted in March 2010.

        The population of 119,000 was based on estimates of elk numbers in the fall of 2010 before the harvest of about 16,000 elk during the hunting season.
        Fish and Game estimates Idaho’s current elk population to be about 103,000, a decline of about 18 percent from the peak in 1997.

      1. the only mounting toll is the amount that Earthjustice et al is raising off of the fear they perpetuate. Hi there Pot, I’m Kettle.

    2. I’ve been writing about the wolves since 1995. I watched the anti-wolf narrative develop — the decimation of livestock and elk, the invention of a new kind of wolf called the “Canadian wolf,” the alleged danger from wolf diseases, the idea that the wolf population would grow beyond all bounds.

      I’d say 95 per cent of it is false.

      1. …and in EJ’s vigorous legal challenges, they have inadvertently put the ESA in it’s current precarious position.

        So given how many different measures are currently at the Congressional level to remove wolves entirely from the ESA, , wouldn’t you trade Idaho and Montana management under the now abandoned respective wolf management plans for possibly saving the ESA?

        Probably not, because there is a brief to write and a lawsuit to file.

      2. So, Eric, are you suggesting that the rape was only brutal because we had the audacity to struggle? Do you think that Otter, Rammell, Bridges, Beers, and the rest of the crew would have conducted a gentler rape and not beaten up our kids if we had relaxed, kept quiet, and tried to enjoy it?

  4. Our lawmakers are getting extremely conservative in most aspects of law. For this process looks bad for our wolves and other wildlife predators. It just seems the entire congress is afraid of the tea party and anybody who is conservative. I’m really afraid for the wolf introduction program as a whole,people want to dismantle it little by little.

  5. Elk, the difference is that no one is looking to put the elk into extinction status as they are with wolves. Take away ESA protections and wolf management into the hands of these states, and that “healthy population” of wolves will quickly become marginal. The states, the anti wolf industries have stated that is their intent. I don’t know why people don’t get it…

  6. “Such reissuance (including this section) shall not be subject to judicial review.”
    See, I just don’t see how this flies. If this is legal, why not just add this little provision to every single bill? No more legal challenges to any bill?! There are three branches of government for a reason. They are designed to keep one another in check. You can’t just pass a bill that says, “We are not subject to judicial review!” Sounds like state legislatures exempting themselves from federal law. Why not just pass a bill requiring Wyoming to come up with an acceptable management plan, or better yet, comming up with a science based plan for post listing wolf management for the entire population? One plan, one wolf population. Makes too much sense.

  7. How about taking the % of Elk decline on a yearly basis and setting the wolf hunting % the same not including Hunter harvest on elk!

      1. Lay off the booze and re-read what I said! Maybe some yoga and deep breathes will bring ya back into reality. A Valium might not hurt either.

  8. That was meant to be fair excluding Hunter harvest! Just natural causes ect! Try reading before you comment!

  9. “That was meant to be fair excluding Hunter harvest! Just natural causes ect! Try reading before you comment!”

    Try a spell checker before you comment.

      1. From Wikipedia
        “In computing, a spell checker (or spell check) is an application program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly. Spell checkers may be stand-alone capable of operating on a block of text, or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary, or search engine.”

        Try again loser

  10. “How about taking the % of Elk decline on a yearly basis and setting the wolf hunting % the same not including Hunter harvest on elk!”

    Ok what are you talking about? Spell check what?

    1. That means Hunter harvest has know bearing on the Elk % decline. So anything after that is natural and set Wolf take numbers on that basis.

    2. It will take some time for this to occur, as neither elk herds or wolf numbers will be constant, but in a dynamic equilibrium, which means it will take **patience** on the part all parties. Is this possible?

      1. You are right, it would have to be on the yearly count of all animals in question and set from said counts. It would take say 10 years to get a set average, I’m not sure it would work on a yearly deal with so many other factors that come into play. Just an Idea I thought of.

  11. Has anyone ever heard the term “Impeachment?” Instead of being addle-minded complainers, get off your apathetic backsides to organize drives, rallies, and petitions to rid our government of the people we have falsely entrusted to represent us in such circumstances, yet speak only to themselves while regarding personal career agendas in Washington, D.C. We all have this empowerment gauranteed to us by our own constitution. Being proactive extends beyond the scope of a few donations and blogging online.

    1. William Aplin,

      Folks certainly need to go beyond letters, donations, and blogging. I know that some people who comment here are. Maybe a lot of them are.

  12. Thanks for the response, Ralph. I am in Colorado and, as a hunter/sportsman/conservationist I welcomed the introduction of wolves back into the state. For sometime now, disease has infiltrated both deer and elk populations and wolves to me meant a natural solution: culling the sick and dying, therefore strengthening the herds as a whole. Yet, and I apologize for the terminology, there are those mental midgets around Yellowstone who seek any kind of excuse to rid the area of the one thing that is eating into their bankroll. I direct this comment toward paid hunting guides and some ranchers. One such individual started posting videos on YouTube. This kind of propaganda is what really speaks to my Celtic ire. Out of due respect, I realize that there are and will be opponents. But I can’t and won’t respect a man who speaks from the same place he sits on…and I don’t mean “chair.”

    You are more than welcome to view the videos…27 in all…but the professional model is entitled “Yellowstone is Dead.”

      1. jon,
        Ah, so I am a virgin to his blaspheming ways, ay? What I was noticing from it all was it was made by people who weren’t concerned about game management nor the health of the population as a whole; they were more concerned about QUANTITY and how it equated to MONIES and BUSINESS. I am a staunch supporter for game management as a means of maintaining the overall health of the population. But God put wolves on the planet for a reason, and they are far more apt at sensing a herd animal that is sick or lame than I or you. I wonder at man’s reasoning: After all, how did Lady Nature handle business before we violated her ground with our imperfect footprints?

      2. Actually the relationship between wolves, herd animals, and humans goes back some 50 to 100 thousand years. Here in North America, humans migrated here several thousand years before bison, elk, deer, or wolves. This idea that we are intruders into THEIR world is pure fantasy.

      3. pw, the first gray wolf migrated to na 750,000 years ago. As far as the evidence tells us, man has only been in na for 50,000 years. This might change if they find new evidence, but it’s clear who was in na first and it wasn’t man.

      4. jon…not true. Dire wolves were here longer than humans but not gray wolves.

      5. …your numbers for both humans and gray wolves are way off. The first wave of human migration came about 17,000 bp on a coastal route and a second wave came about 13,500 bp when an ice-free corridor opened east of the Rockies as a way south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. This is why some Native Americans resemble orientals and some don’t. Those who resemble orientals came in the second wave after the oriental feature developed in Asia. Those in the first wave came before the oriental features developed. Gray wolves, fox, deer, elk, bison, and gray wolves all came with the humans in the second wave via the ice free corridore.

        Can you cite some references for your numbers? If you show me yours, I will show you mine.

      6. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041118104010.htm

        This may have changed. I cannot find any more recent.

        http://www.wolfcountry.net/information/WolfOrigins.html

        “Research of wolf history by Robert Wayne at the University of California suggests that a number of wolflike canids diverged from a common ancestor about two to three million years ago. The first gray wolf,(Canis Lupis), probably appeared in Eurasia sometime in the early Pleistocene period about a million years ago. Around 750,000 years ago, it is though to have migrated to North America.
        The Dire Wolf,(Canis Dirus), larger and heavier than the gray wolf, evolved earlier and the two co existed in North America for about 400,000 years. As prey became extinct around 16,000 years ago due to climatic change, the dire wolf gradually became extinct itself. Around 7,000 years ago the gray wolf became the prime canine predator in North America.”

        As I said, gray wolves were in na way before humans. it’s not even debatable.

    1. Personally, Yellowstone is NOT Dead!!! Anyone who thinks
      so is Absolutely Nuts Nuts Nuts in My Opinion! If someone
      thinks that Yellowstone is dead, then they need to put on a
      pack and go into the Greater Yellowstone Deep Backcountry
      Wilds with wandering around and living all spring, summer,
      and fall. And he would soon hope that he does not end up
      being Bear Poop! There is actually how much country in the
      Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem where us modern humans
      really never even go into anymore in what I have
      personally seen. I have hiked high mountains ridges and
      seen them covered in Elk and recently also. Seen high
      mountain basins covered with Elk high in the Absarokas.
      The one thing though which have seen is that now the Elk
      are how much of the time hiding out more in the deep
      brush and forests and always on the lookout. That Sooooo
      Wonderful Greater Yellowstone Backcountry is covered in
      Life in what I have seen. It is the people that one will not
      see much anymore in many of these wayyy backcounttry
      areas. And this also includes the hunters. Last fall in what I
      have heard and saw, there were hardly no private hunting
      parties back in the Teton Wilderness, the Absarokas! The
      wonderful Greater Yellowstone Wilds and Wildlife will be
      around long after us crazy and dumb two Leggeds have
      long since vanished bigtime. This video should be
      called, ‘Hunters Gone Crazy’. In My Opinion!

  13. Well….. bison, deer, elk, and wolves considerably predate humans into the Americas. For example, elk date back into the early Miocene Period, around 23 million years ago, gray wolves to 300,000 years, the Dire wolf to 1.8 million years, bison to 500,000 years ago and so on.

    There is not any generally accepted proof of humans in North America until around 13,000 years ago. There are a few sites reportedly older, but they are controversial – and still not even slightly close to the named animals as far as age.

    1. Are you reading this pw? The recent evidence says humans were in north america 50,000 years ago. I am trying to find something more recent, but I can’t. I don’t think it’s impossible that down the line they find something that says that humans were in north america even before 50,000 years ago. Personally, I think it’s safe to say that gray wolves were in north america way before humans. Please post something if you have it that proves me wrong.

  14. jon: Looking at your comment, “The first gray wolf,(Canis Lupis), probably appeared in Eurasia sometime in the early Pleistocene period about a million years ago. Around 750,000 years ago, it is though to have migrated to North America.” that is what current hunters are saying now. They just got the facts mixed up a bit and are about 750,000 years to late.

    1. I’d love to see pointwest post his proof that proves that humans were in North America way before gray wolves because I can’t find any what so ever.

      1. You have to take into account that a lot of the people posting here and on other sites still think the earth itself is only 4,000 years old. So, discussions of wolves predating humans by 750,000 years may have limited traction with them.

  15. PointWest: Can you please verify where you got your information from stating that humans had been in NA long before deer, bison, wolves and elk? I did a research paper about a year and a half ago regarding life on earth in North America and the sources I researched stated similarly to what jon and IDhiker have stated (offcourse the years are not exact but pretty close between the different sources).

  16. jon: Even the recent evidence you found that stated humans being in NA around 50,000 years ago does not mean it was the Homo sapiens. They may have posted the word “humans” in referring to a close relative to us, like Homo erectus, Homo habilis, etc. I still wouldn’t be able to believe that “Lucy” from Africa, who is not Homo sapien (Australopithicus 3.8-3 million years old) is older then wolves from Eurasia.

    1. You make a good point, but I believe pw is talking about modern man, so even if it’s 50,000 years ago or 100,000 years ago or what have you, that is way after gray wolves are thought to migrated to North America. It’s not even close. The #s you see for gray wolves and humans migrating to north america are not even close at all.

  17. To all of you who have chosen an argumentive debate on my previous posting on wolves and man in NA….kudos. I am finding the debate both facinating and informative. Don’t get me wrong…i’m not picking sides. But I am willing to check reliable research references (if anyone cares to post). Sorry, but that excludes Wikopedia where anyone can alter the data.

    1. Not anyone, I have tried to sign in several times and have never been able to contribute cited studies on Wiki…

      1. JB, do you believe that gray wolves were in North America before modern humans or not?

      2. Jon:

        To the best of my knowledge that is what the science says–though it gets complicated with the various sub-species and multiple invasions.

        Really, I don’t think it matters who was here first. Wolves certainly preceded industrial agriculture (the real culprit in their demise), and coexisted alongside humans for thousands of years.

      3. Just in case, you were asking me Jon, I am with JB, in truth it really does not matter who was here first..

    2. William,

      Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation by Dave Mech and Luigi Boitani has a chapter written by Ronald Nowak, who was a respected taxonomist with the US Fish & Wildlife Service until he resigned in the late 1990s, protesting the FWS’s failure to list species. The chapter, entitled “Wolf Evolution and Taxonomy” describes how various species and subspecies of wolves entered NA.

  18. Want more info, well about this:
    Book:
    After the Ice – A Global Human History 20000-5000BC
    by Steven Mithen
    (professor of Early Prehistory and Head of the Scholl of Human and Environmental Sciences at the U of Reading. Also author of “The Singing Neanderthals (Harvard.)

    Page: 3 The Birth of History – Global warming, archeological evidence and human history.

    Human hisotry began in 50000 bc. Or thereabouts. Perhaps 100,000bc, but certainly not before. Human evolution has a far longer pedigree – at least three billion years have passed since the origin of life, and six million since our lineage split from that of chimpanzee. History, the cumulative development of events and knowledge, is a recent and remarkably brief affair. Little of significance happened until 20000bs – people simply continued living as hunter-gatherers, just as their ancestors had been doing for millions of years.”

    Page: 211
    “Although the Folsom discoveries proved that people were in the Americas before the end of the ice age, the date of their arrival remains unknown – 12000,20000,30000,50000BS, or even earlier? Nobody can yet provide a definitive account of how and when the first people arrived in the Americas. I have little doubt, however, that this occurred after the great freeze of 20000BC; it was one of the key consequences of global warming for human history.”

    It’s a great book, very informative. Hope this adds to the debate.

    1. Sorry, I didn’t proof read very well, a couple corrections: should have been 20000 BC and 50000BC – wanted to be sure someone didn’t take the BS was a Freudian Slip.

      1. LOL Doryfun,
        I knew what you meant and appreciate your input. In fact, there isn’t a single person in this discussion who’s comments are without value: PointsWest, JB, Phil, jon, Kayla, Savebears, or anyone else who cares to contribute. Knowledge is strength. I have copy-pasted your suggestions to my files and will follow up on the references this weekend. I am vigilant and will monitor the discussion as time permits.

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