FWP said it was opening another round because the department wanted to be sure it hadn’t violated state laws requiring FWP to notify county commissioners of the opportunity to comment.
On Wednesday, 15 organizations sent 60-day notices to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service saying they would sue the agency over its decision, issued Friday, that gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains don’t warrant an Endangered Species listing.
With the recent reintroduction of 10 wolves to the Western Slope of Colorado, experts say it’s only a matter of time before they creep into the eastern part of Utah.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided against relisting the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act, choosing instead to develop a national recovery plan, which wolf advocates don’t think will go far enough.
Colorado media outlets reported that the state had reached out to other states, including Montana, but had to go to Oregon to get its first wolves, after Idaho and Montana declined.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday took a skeptical view of an injunction issued by a federal judge last year, which prohibited wolf trapping in a broad swath of Western Montana.
The archived wolf skulls hold the genetic blueprints, disease diaries and behavioral novellas of a scientifically and culturally significant wolf population.