Category Archives: Wolves

Alpha wolf pack sighted in Flagstaff

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DAILY SUN STAFF Arizona Daily Sun
April 01, 2014

The city of Flagstaff has signed a federal agreement to become the first Wolf Sanctuary City in Arizona.

The contract with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service comes as night infrared cameras have picked up images of endangered Mexican gray wolves from the White Mountains migrating through Flagstaff.

The wolves are from the Alpha pack and are believed to be headed for the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Others are expected to follow.

The agreement comes amid fears by Fish & Wildlife that state wildlife managers will attempt to capture and remove any endangered wolf that wanders outside the recovery zone.

“This is a win-win deal,” said Mayor Jerry Nabours. “The wolves get safe passage and Flagstaff gets another tourist attraction, even if the packs are just passing through.”

State Rep. Bob Thorpe has introduced legislation seeking to “deport” Mexican gray wolves as a nonnative species that he contends have been introduced to Arizona illegally.

“If you read the Endangered Species Act, the animals were intended to be introduced only cooperatively,” Thorpe said.

Instead, he said the wolves were forced on Arizona by environmentalist lawsuits.

STRUGGLED TO GAIN FOOTHOLD

The Mexican wolf population has struggled to gain a foothold in the White Mountains since being reintroduced into the wild in 1998. The animals are often shot by ranchers who fear for their livestock.

But North America’s most endangered mammal has taken kindly to Flagstaff and its approach to wolf rights.

The Arizona Department of Transportation’s infrared night vision cameras recently captured photos of the wolves entering Flagstaff. The wolves were traveling using the FUTS tunnels beneath major roadways, which Flagstaff officials now hope to make more “wolf-friendly.”

Thorpe said that state game wardens have been the only thing keeping the animals from taking over the entire state, so it’s only a matter of time before the welcoming city is overrun.

But biologists think the wolves’ likely destination isn’t Flagstaff at all, but the deer-rich forests on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

A Northern Arizona University study recently showed that the wolves are using the Little Colorado River corridor to migrate.

Billy Babbitt, president of Babbitt Ranches, says his cowboys tell him they’ve seen the Alpha pack moving that way now for weeks. Once they reach the national park, the animals will be under the purview of the federal government and out of state hands.

Earlier this year, residents in the Coyote Springs neighborhood off Fort Valley Road said they were not alarmed to learn that mountain lions had been eating deer in their backyards. But a laboratory analysis done by the Arizona Department of Game and Fish has now shown the kills were actually made by wolves.

“At first, we felt very lucky because there’s a lot of wildlife out here to spare for predators,” said Coyote Springs resident Ben Lamb. “But now we’re wondering whether it’s so good for the pets.”

Flagstaff Animal Control Officer John Kachemkwik dismissed Lamb’s complaint.

“That’s what leash laws are for,” he said. “As for housecats roaming at night, they’re on their own.”

LACK OF DEEP SNOW

The dry winter has disrupted the normal hunting pattern for wolves, who take advantage of deep snow to catch deer and elk.

Instead, say biologists, they appear to be drawn to the colder climate of the North Rim, which still has a snowpack.

Thorpe warned, however, that he has heard from a friend of his neighbor’s plumber that Mexican gray wolves are especially fond of chihuahuas and likely to linger in Flagstaff.

“Mabye someone posted it on Facebook,” Thorpe said when pressed for his source.

Wolf advocates, however, said the sanctuary agreement meant the wolves had the equivalent of amnesty and could not be persecuted for their choice of prey.

“Wolves have the same rights to a varied diet as people do,” said Mandy Beach, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter. “We need to be accommodating to all of God’s creatures,”

Thorpe, however, said he will introduce a bill to require the Flagstaff Unified School District to start building cages around bus stops to protect schoolchildren, similar to what other municipalities have done in New Mexico.

“I’d require the bus driver to be armed, too, except the council has declared school buses to be gun-free zones,” Thorpe said.

Shelly Wool, a spokesperson with Arizona Game and Fish, says her agency is not pleased, either. She said game wardens are examining ways to stop the wolves before they make it into the Flagstaff sanctuary zone.

One idea being floated is a corridor in which it would be legal to hunt the lobos. Wool said the wolves would be like sitting ducks if forced into the Pumphouse Wash Natural Area near Kachina Village, where the landscape could sandwich them between the interstate and neighborhoods.

“No agency has the right or moral authority to supersede Game and Fish when it comes to animal management,” Wool explained. “Besides, the wolves are competing with hunters for elk and deer, and that is costing us a lot of money in license tags.”

Beach, however, said the Sierra Club has already established a Sanctuary City Compensation Fund, which would pay pet owners as well as Game and Fish for any loss of dogs or game species, respectively.

“We’re not sure how they’re going to get across the Grand Canyon,” Beach added. “Maybe that tramway corridor down to the Confluence will be ready — by next April 1.”

http://azdailysun.com/news/local/alpha-wolf-pack-sighted-in-flagstaff/article_d5932aca-b95d-11e3-88cb-0019bb2963f4.html

Wolves and Ravens

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The relationship between ravens and wolves has been a topic of comments on a post about a Petition to Stop the Slaughter of Ravens in Idaho. Whenever I’ve seen wolves on a carcass in Yellowstone, ravens are right there with them to cash in and help clean up. The ravens lead in turn wolves to potential meals, letting them do the dirty work they aren’t equipped for.

Here’s a photo of the two together in Yellowstone’s Hayden Valley…

Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

Rockies Gray Wolf Numbers Steady Despite Hunting

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BILLINGS, Mont. April 4, 2014 (AP)
By MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press

State and federal agencies said Friday there were a minimum of 1,691 wolves at the end of 2013.

That’s virtually unchanged from the prior year even as state wildlife agencies adopted aggressive tactics to drive down wolf numbers.

Under pressure from livestock and hunting groups, Idaho officials have used helicopters to shoot packs. Montana has eased hunting and trapping rules.

Federal wolf recovery coordinator Mike Jimenez says he expects the population to gradually decline over time in the face of the states’ efforts, but to remain healthy.

A pending proposal would lift protections for wolves across much of the remaining Lower 48 states.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/rockies-gray-wolf-numbers-steady-hunting-23193709

copyrighted wolf in river

Anti-Wolf Sentiment Thrives in Siberia

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siberian anti-wolfersMore drastic and controversial methods are to be imposed to counter the wolf plague in the next 12 months. Picture: Victor Everstov

………………………………..

If you’re interested in seeing more graphic images and reading an article bemoaning the potential threat to domestic reindeer herds numbering in the tens of thousands, be my guest. Personally, I can’t stomach any more wolf death or happy stories about any human’s way if life. Humans are the only plague on the planet:

http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/features/wolves-preying-on-reindeer-herds-threaten-seasonal-joy-in-remote-siberian-villages/

Do wolves, cougars help curb diseases?

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copyrighted Hayden wolf walking

April 2, 2014 4:30 am

The New West / By Todd Wilkinson

“Predators are bad for wildlife.” How often have Americans heard this refrain in public forums?

Pervasive as a belief in rural Western culture, it drives political discourse. It also is part of a nonstop feedback loop of social reinforcement, rife in barber shops, ammo stores, saloons, coffee klatches and outfitter camps.

But does it withstand scientific scrutiny? Do predators such as wolves and cougars “devastate” wildlife or do they help keep public game herds healthier?

Predator experts and others specializing in wildlife conservation medicine say it’s an important consideration when thinking about protocols for managing zoonotic diseases in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

I contacted biologist L. David Mech, one of the world’s foremost wolf authorities. He has written or contributed to hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers on wolves and prey.

“In the main, the preponderance of scientific evidence supports the view that wolves generally kill the old, the young, the sick and the weak,” Mech began. “There’s so much documented field data behind it.”

All the things humans treasure about every wild prey species — their physiology, agility and resilience — are reflections of the predators that made them adapt and evolve over eons.

Keeping domestic livestock healthy and fat often involves huge doses of antibiotics and, in some cases, growth hormones. Not so for free-ranging wildlife, especially wildlife not subjected to unnatural animal husbandry practices, such as artificially nourishing wild elk at crowded feedgrounds.

Wildlife professionals know such conditions elevate animal susceptibility to deadly pathogens like brucellosis, tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease, threatening ecological well-being.

Mech made a fascinating point: Wolves appear to target sick animals that, to the human eye, exhibit no overt symptoms of disease.

“There’s a lot more going on than we can detect,” Mech said. “They are killing animals that most people would say, ‘That animal looks pretty healthy to me,’ but in fact it isn’t.”

In 2003, Denver Post reporter Theo Stein interviewed scientists about CWD spreading though deer and elk in Colorado. Dr. Valerius Geist, who paradoxically has become a darling of anti-wolfers, made this assertion about the significance of wolves in containing CWD spread via proteins called prions.

“Wolves will certainly bring the disease to a halt,” he said. “They will remove infected individuals and clean up carcasses that could transmit the disease.”

Stein added that “Geist and Princeton University biologist Andrew Dobson theorize that killing off the wolf allowed CWD to take hold in the first place.”

Wolves aren’t alone. In a 2009 study titled “Mountain lions prey selectively on prion-infected mule deer,” researchers in Colorado discovered that “adult mule deer killed by mountain lions were more likely to be prion-infected than were deer killed more randomly … suggesting that mountain lions were selecting for infected individuals when they targeted adult deer.”

Researchers said, “Other studies indicate that predators like wolves and coyotes select prey disproportionately if they appear impaired by malnutrition, age or disease.”

In another study researcher N. Thompson Hobbs examined the potential impact of wolves on CWD-infected elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, where lobos are now absent.

Wolves, he found, could reduce average life spans of infected elk and therefore limit the amount of time infectious animals could spread disease to others.

“We suggest that as CWD distribution and wolf range overlap in the future, wolf predation may suppress disease emergence or limit prevalence,” Hobbs said.
Wyoming doesn’t accept this scientific reality. In Jackson Hole, where unnatural feeding of wapiti on the National Elk Refuge is contributing to persistent brucellosis infection and putting migrating elk at high CWD risk, wolves are killed under the ironic guise of “keeping elk herds healthy.”

In Wyoming’s “predator zone” which encompasses many of the state’s 22 elk feedgrounds, wolves can be killed at any time of day year round.

Are Wyoming, Idaho and Montana spending millions in tax dollars to eliminate the natural allies that help keep wildlife diseases such as brucellosis and CWD in check? Mech stays out of the political fray, though he says the value of predators is clear.

“Based upon everything I’ve seen over the course of my career, I generally stand behind the assertion that wolves make prey populations healthier,” he said. “The evidence to support it is overwhelming.”

Todd Wilkinson’s column appears every week in the News&Guide. He is author of “Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet.”

Back Off the Wolf Killing Crusade Idaho

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copyrighted Hayden wolf in lodgepoles

Year after year, Idaho demonstrates its intolerance for wolves. Idaho Department of Fish and Game, while tasked with preserving all of Idaho’s wildlife, continues to ratchet up hunting, trapping and snaring pressure on Idaho’s diminishing wolf population.

Around 600 wolves live in Idaho, which is also home to 83 times more coyotes, 33 times more bears, and four-to-five times more mountain lions than wolves. All of these species eat other animals to survive and all sometimes attack livestock. But Idaho reserves its special treatment for wolves alone.

Idaho’s wolf population has fallen consistently since 2009. Every year wolves have been under state management, Idaho has expanded, extended and loosened wolf hunting and trapping regulations. It’s an indefensible notion that “adequate regulatory mechanisms” are in place, as mandated by the Endangered Species Act for the oversight period under state management.

Idaho claimed it would manage wolves like any other species. No Idaho wildlife management authority can honestly defend this position.

Actions by Gov. Butch Otter and the state Legislature indicate they believe IDFG isn’t effective enough in killing wolves. The Wolf Control Board bill, “the wolf-kill bill,” was a priority the governor chose for his January State of the State address. Now, 400,000 taxpayer dollars for killing wolves is likely to be a recurring expense. Legislative sponsors and supporters repeatedly stated their intent to reduce Idaho’s wolf population to 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs, the federal minimum.

As the state of Idaho and IDFG reach to further extremes to kill more and more wolves, these actions aren’t going unnoticed.

Far beyond the scope of wildlife management, these practices are quickly giving a black eye to Idaho’s reputation across the country. Idaho is not an island. It does not exist in a vacuum. If the state walks far enough out on a limb, the limb will break, bringing Idaho back to earth under an increasingly focused spotlight.

As fewer people take up hunting, those who enjoy Idaho’s nature in a nonconsumptive way steadily increase. IDFG’s one-dimensional revenue stream from hunting and fishing licenses and tag sales cannot keep pace with fiscal challenges. It’s time to realign economic realities with income-generating constituencies.

Recognizing the increasing difficulty of remaining solvent with growing bills, Director Virgil Moore commendably organized the 2012 IDFG Wildlife Summit to modernize the agency. Unfortunately, necessary innovations are still not forthcoming. Instead, the agency continues pursuing scientifically unsupportable programs, such as excessive and expensive lethal wolf removal and expanding trapping.

Recently, IDFG conducted its sixth costly wolf eradication action in the Lolo, killing 23 wolves from a helicopter, to artificially bolster a declining elk herd, even though IDFG has acknowledged the decline was precipitated by dramatic changes to habitat and vegetation that support elk.

This spring, IDFG hired a professional hunter/trapper to kill wolf packs in the same designated wilderness where wolves were originally reintroduced. IDFG has also declared another goal – reducing wolf populations by 60 percent in the same wilderness.

Remarkably, as this continues, Idaho’s statewide elk population of 107,000 has been growing since 2010. The presence of wolves equating to poor hunting opportunity is a fallacy. Wyoming, with the third largest wolf population in the West, reported their three largest elk harvests on record in the past four years, with 45 percent success in 2013. Hunters can coexist with wolves while maintaining a robust hunting tradition.

Efforts to kill wolves on Idaho’s wild landscapes, especially in designated wilderness – where wolves belong – will never yield the long-term results the agency desires. IDFG continues burning precious dollars on failing programs, while gaining increasingly widespread negative publicity as the black sheep of the nation. For the sake of our beautiful state and all of its wildlife, let’s hope that Idaho soon corrects course.

Garrick Dutcher is the program director for the Idaho-based national nonprofit organization Living With Wolves.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2014/04/01/3111241/back-off-wolf-crusade-and-dispel.html#storylink=cpy

If Wolves Are Protected in France, Why Are They Being Hunted?

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copyrighted Hayden wolf walking

http://www.care2.com/causes/if-wolves-are-protected-in-france-why-are-they-being-hunted.html

by Judy Molland
March 27, 2014

The Big Bad Wolf stock figure of so many children’s fairy tales, has surfaced again.

This time it’s in France, where there has been an outcry from animal rights groups since wolf hunts have resumed due to increased attacks by the animals after their “European comeback.”

Wolves were originally hunted to extinction by farmers in France back in the 1930s, but in 1992 a mating pair crossed the border from Italy. It is now estimated that there are around 300 individuals in 25 packs across France.

For many people, this is good news, but the Daily Telegraph reports that hunters, “wolf lieutenants,” and local farmers have grouped together to carry out a cull on the animals after sheep farmers complained of incessant attacks on their flocks.

This is in spite of the fact that the wolf is a protected species under the Berne convention and European law, meaning that it can no longer be hunted or poisoned.

So how can these hunts be legal?

It turns out that there are exceptions to this rule.

Culls can take place when all other attempts at protecting local livestock have failed. Under a government wolf plan, some 24 individuals can be “removed” in this way per year.

As it happens, the attacks have been happening just 25 miles inland from the top tourist spot of Nice on the French Riviera, and just 15 miles from Grasse, known as France’s perfume capital, which might explain the push for a cull. The hills in this region of the Var, called Caussols, have lost around 100 sheep to the grey wolf.

Conservation groups are understandably furious at the decision to re-intoduce wolf-hunting.

“To return to wolf hunts as if we were in the Middle Ages is scandalous. That the local authorities are organising them is even worse,” said Jean-François Darmstaedter, president of Ferus, who threatened to challenge their legality in the European courts.

“We call them ‘political killings’ as their only aim is to allow farmers to let off steam but they will solve nothing. Blindly shooting wolves will have no effect other than to exacerbate the problem. If you kill the alpha male, you can split up a pack, which will cause far more damage.”

And in fact, public opinion today is very much on the wolf’s side. A recent poll, commissioned by a pro-wolf group, found that 80 percent of French people wanted wolves to be protected from farmers, rather than sheep from wolves.

Neverthless, the wolf is once again under attack.

Of course, the track record in the U.S. is equally awful, especially in the state of Idaho, where state lawmakers just approved a bill that sets aside $400,000 to exterminate 500 wolves. Adding insult to injury, the bill takes management away from the state wildlife agency and places it in the hands of a “wolf depredation control board” that will consist solely of members appointed and overseen by Governor Butch Otter. This is the man who in 2007 said he wanted to be the first to kill an Idaho wolf after federal protections were taken away.

This is exactly the kind of ugly attitude that animal activists feared when Congress in 2011 stripped Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the northern Rockies, where some 1,600 wolves have been killed since protections were lifted.

So what happened? The United States worked for 40 years to return wolves to the American landscape after they had been driven to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 states.

The Endangered Species Act allowed wolves to begin recovery, at least in a few places like the northern Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes states. After reintroductions in Yellowstone National Park and parts of Idaho, wolves came back.

Now this has all changed, as politicians in Congress have stripped federal protections from wolves and passed those protections over to the states.

Some states in the U.S. are pursuing wolves in much the same way that the French government in France is pursuing wolves in the oh-so-chic area near the French Riviera.

France and the U.S. have much in common after all, and that’s definitely not good news for wolves.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/if-wolves-are-protected-in-france-why-are-they-being-hunted.html#ixzz2xBUyjqrn

Idaho Intent on Killing Wolves in the Wilderness

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copyrighted wolf in water

By Ken Cole On February 12, 2014
The Wildlife News

New plan aims to reduce population by 60% to please elk hunters

POCATELLO, Idaho – In an effort to inflate elk populations for commercial outfitters and hunters, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) hopes to kill 60 percent of the wolves in the Middle Fork area of central Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, according to a predator management plan for the area released this week.

IDFG’s plan calls for an intensive program of wolf killing in the largest forested wilderness area in the lower-48 states through several successive years of professional hunting and trapping efforts designed to boost the local elk population beyond the level that can be sustained through natural predator-prey interactions. It comes just weeks after a hunter-trapper hired by the state wildlife agency killed nine wolves in an effort to exterminate two wolf packs in the Middle Fork area. State officials terminated the program in the midst of an emergency court proceeding to halt the program.

Earthjustice is in court to stop the professional extermination of wolves in central Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Last month, Earthjustice filed an emergency motion asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to preserve the wolves and their vital contribution to the wilderness character of the . Rather than presenting its legal defense to Earthjustice’s argument, IDFG temporarily halted the program until the end of June 2014. Earthjustice will be filing its opening brief later this week in the Ninth Circuit proceeding. Earthjustice is representing long-time Idaho wilderness advocate Ralph Maughan, along with Defenders of Wildlife, Western Watersheds Project, Wilderness Watch, and Center for Biological Diversity in the case.

Statement from attorney Tim Preso of the Northern Rockies office of Earthjustice.
“The state of Idaho has made clear that it intends to double down on its plan to transform the Middle Fork area of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness from a naturally regulated wilderness to an elk farm benefiting commercial outfitters and recreational hunters. The only thing that is not clear is whether the U.S. Forest Service will step up to defend the wilderness character of this landscape on behalf of all the American people or instead will, as it has done to date, let Idaho effectively run the area to advance its own narrow interest in elk production. For our part, we intend to do everything we can to obtain a federal court ruling that will require the Forest Service to protect this special place and its wildlife.”

Statement from Idaho resident and long-time conservationist Ralph Maughan:
“By implication our lawsuit aims to protect the entire nationwide Wilderness Preservation System from similar efforts to transform the wild into a bland farm for a few kinds of common animals.”
Statement from Idaho resident and Defenders of Wildlife representative Suzanne Stone:
“It’s clear that IDFG isn’t interested in sustainable wolf recovery. Instead, they’re focused on doing anything they can to kill as many wolves as possible in the state. That’s not responsible state wildlife management any way you look at it. Idaho committed to responsibly managing wolves when federal protections were removed just a few short years ago. Actions like this just further demonstrate that they’re failing to uphold their end of the agreement.”

Statement from Ken Cole of Western Watersheds Project:
“For the idea of wilderness to have any meaning at all, wildlife must be allowed to self-regulate, to seek its own balance, to be wild. Instead, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game insists on heavy handed management of wolves in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness to benefit a tiny minority of the people who use and enjoy the area. The nation’s premier wilderness is not just a recreation area of rocks and ice, it is a thriving ecosystem that should be treated as the treasure it is.”

Statement from George Nickas, executive director of Wilderness Watch:
“The State of Idaho has shown once again it is incapable of being a responsible partner in wilderness administration. It’s high time the Forest Service exert its authority and obligation to protect the public’s interest in Wilderness and wildlife protection.”

“This outrageous plan to slaughter wolves in the lower 48’s largest wilderness in an ill-conceived attempt to increase elk numbers is only the latest example of just how backwards wildlife management has become in Idaho. Already more than 900 wolves have been killed in Idaho during state-sanctioned hunting and trapping seasons. And this unnecessary slaughter will continue unless the courts step in and stop the senseless killing.”

http://www.wildernesswatch.org/newsroom/guardian/Targets_Wolves.html

Idaho’s Wolf-Killing Atrocity Continues

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-greenwald/idahos-wolf-hunting_b_5010249.html

by Noah Greenwald, 03/24/2014

When it comes to killing wolves, Idaho has an appetite that just can’t becopyrighted wolf in river sated.

State lawmakers just approved a bill that sets aside $400,000 to exterminate 500 wolves. Adding insult to injury, the bill takes management away from the state wildlife agency and places it in the hands of a “wolf depredation control board” that will consist solely of members appointed and overseen by Governor Butch Otter, who said in 2007 that he wanted to be the first to kill an Idaho wolf after federal protections were taken away.

Just a few months ago, Idaho sent a bounty hunter into the woods to wipe out two wolf packs and more recently announced plans to kill 60 percent of the wolves in another part of the state.

The slaughter continues and Idaho’s political leaders seem to bask in the carnage they’re leaving behind.

It’s exactly the kind of ugly behavior that we feared when Congress in 2011 stripped Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the northern Rockies, where some 1,600 wolves have been killed since protections were lifted. And it’s clear, more mass killing is on the way.

This isn’t supposed to be happening. The United States worked for 40 years to return wolves to the American landscape. Canis lupus had been driven to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 states as settlement moved west, ranching moved in and government sponsored programs trapped, poisoned and shot wolves into oblivion.

The Endangered Species Act allowed wolves to begin recovery, at least in a few places like the northern Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes states. After reintroductions in Yellowstone National Park and parts of Idaho, wolves came back. New packs formed. Families were built. Ecosystems, now with a keystone predator back in the mix, began to function like they had historically.

Politicians in Congress, though, pulled the plug and unceremoniously stripped federal protections. We were told that wolves could be responsibly managed by state wildlife agencies in places like Idaho.

Truth is, wolves are being persecuted in Idaho with the same kind of repulsive attitude that nearly drove them to extinction 100 years ago. Only now it’s happening under the official state flag.

And here’s where it gets worse: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now wants to take away federal protections for nearly all wolves in the lower 48 states. And, just like in 2011, we’re being told that wolves will be fine. They won’t be. Wolves today live in just five percent of their historic habitat.

Abandoning wolf protections across the country will not only ensure that wolves never get reestablished in places like the southern Rockies or the Northeast but that any wolves that remain will be subject to the same kind of treatment they’re getting in Idaho.

Idaho may have gone too far this time. The rule removing protections for wolves, which was made law by Congress, specified criteria under which wolves would again receive consideration for Endangered Species Act protection and this atrocious bill may just have crossed the line.