A lawsuit over the Forest Service’s approval of the use of helicopters in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness is no surprise.

But the widespread opposition by environmentalists shows that the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s management of wolves is not drawing high marks even from groups that support delisting. Western Watersheds and the Wolf Recovery Foundation had already filed a lawsuit challenging the Forest Service’s decision to allow Fish and Game to use the helicopters for monitoring and research.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 requires managers to use the least intrusive tools necessary for management and requires them to explore all alternatives first. It also says nothing in the act prevents states from managing the wildlife, which by law, they control.

The Wilderness Society led five other groups into the legal fray last week mostly over the impact of helicopter use on wilderness values.

“The Forest Service’s plan is flawed, unnecessary, and unpopular with experts and the public,” said Craig Gehrke, regional director for The Wilderness Society. “It violates the Forest Service’s obligation to protect the wilderness character of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.”

These groups, which include the Idaho Conservation League, the Sierra Club, the Winter Wildlands Alliance and the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, simply don’t buy the argument of Fish and Game that they can’t get radio collars on wolves in the wilderness effectively without helicopters. Their strongest case is the fact the Nez Perce tribe was able to get 30 radio collars on wolves on the ground without them.

They bring along the gutsy retired forest supervisor who was a pioneer in wilderness management, Tom Kovalicky who said that allowing Idaho Fish and Game to use helicopters to radio collar wolves would “destroy the Forest Service’s past record on administration of wilderness and forever change the management of wilderness areas.”

And to add insult to injury , Jim Peek, the long respected University of Idaho wildlife biologist who taught many of the agency’s biologists, said Fish and Game’s wolf monitoring program is “not a valid research project because it does not have a comprehensive study plan.”

But Rod Sando, who headed wildlife agencies in both Idaho and Minnesota, thinks the state shouldn't even have been forced to get formal Forest Service approval. While he consulted with the Forest Service when managing wildlife in the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, he would not allow the federal agency to dictate the terms of state management.

What really irked many of these groups who are not involved in the lawsuit over delisting wolves is that Fish and Game went into the wilderness last winter without any permit. The Forest Service did force the state to go through the environmental review but only slapped its hands.

Western Watershed’s lawsuit is broader. It sues over the helicopters in the wilderness. But it also builds on a decision in 2002 by U.S. District Judge B Lynn Winmill that wolves within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area are wildlife protected by the SNRA Organic Act; and that livestock grazing is a secondary use that may not “substantially impair” wolves or other wildlife.

Since then Fish and Game and its agents the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, have continued to kill entire packs of wolves, including the well-loved Basin Butte pack near Stanley last November. Just south of the Sawtooth Basin ranchers have worked with environmentalists to use non-lethal methods to manage wolf attacks with reasonably good results.

Most wolf experts expect the wolf pack exterminations will be no more effective if not less. But Idaho lawmakers told Fish and Game officials recently they want more pack exterminations and they are unhappy that the agency listens to wolf advocates at all.

A side note, When Lynne Stone, who had spent several years babysitting the Basin Butte Pack so it wouldn’t eat ranchers’ cows, placed her Idaho wolf tag on one of the wolves shot by Wildlife Services and took it home, Fish and Game officers came to her house in Hailey and confiscated it. She got a warning ticket for illegal possession of wildlife.

Jim Dutcher
and Ralph Maughan have more on the event.

Let’s face it. Wolves make people crazy.