Push to end gray wolf protections is faltering
U.S. House has passed bill, but Senate is short on time to consider it
WASHINGTON — The gray wolf has been in danger in recent weeks of losing the federal protection that for decades has kept it from being hunted.
But the congressional ardor to end the protection — and make it easier to trap or shoot the wolves — is fading fast.
House Republicans last month passed legislation to remove gray wolves in 48 states from the list of species shielded by the Endangered Species Act, which could make it easier to kill them.
The removal of the act’s federal protections would leave laws regulating wolf killing up to the states. It would lift restrictions on logging, grazing and construction activities in wolf habitats that were previously prohibited by the act or required consultation with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, according to Fish and Wildlife spokesman Gavin Shire, who added that states could maintain their own restrictions.
But the House’s initiative has been stuck in the Senate, and with only days remaining in this year’s congressional session, key backers are not optimistic that the bill will go anywhere.
Bills not enacted by Congress before its new session begins next month expire. That means the Manage Our Wolves Act would have to pass the House again in 2019 — a tougher task, as Democrats will run the House of Representatives.
Adam Sarvana, a spokesman for Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, who is in line to chair the House’s Natural Resources Committee, was clear about the bill’s prospects under Grijalva.
“There will not be any gray wolf delisting bills while he’s chairman,” Sarvana said.
In the Senate, plans to end federal protections for wolves have been met with resistance from Pacific Northwest senators such as Patty Murray, D-Wash., who thinks “opening up the Endangered Species Act is not a good idea at this time.”
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the chair of the Senate’s environment committee and a longtime advocate of removing wolves from the Endangered Species Act in his home state, acknowledged that Congress is busy with more monumental tasks.
Ethan Lane, a lobbyist for beef producers who want wolves to be removed from the list of endangered species because they say wolves scare and attack ranchers’ cattle, said a different plan that would remove federal protections in only a handful of states has a better chance.
The HELP for Wildlife Act, a Senate bill, would remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Passage of that more limited bill would be a win for those like Barrasso who say the population has recovered and is “overrunning” the Great Lakes states.
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin both support the more limited Senate bill, but said they have not yet had a chance to consider the more sweeping bill that passed the House.
There’s a third way Congress could act on wolves: The House version of the bill that funds the Department of the Interior includes a provision that would end federal protections for gray wolves in the Lower 48 states, just like the bill the House passed last month. That language is not in the Senate spending bill.
Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., lead the Senate’s negotiations on spending bills, and “have made it their position to keep poison pill riders out of the appropriations bills,” according to Jay Tilton, a Leahy spokesman. A poison pill is a provision that could doom the entire spending package.