Support a National Wolf Recovery Plan

As someone who cares about ensuring a lasting future for wolves in the U.S., I strongly urge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to adopt a comprehensive recovery plan for wolves in the contiguous United States.

I was deeply concerned about the recent elimination of federal protections for wolves in Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies. By turning over management to states that plan to kill as many as 70% of the wolves in the region, your agency has dealt a serious blow to wolf recovery efforts.

The agency's failure to secure a future for wolves in the Southwest is also of great concern to me.

The Service's recovery plans for America's wolves are badly out of date (the most recent plan is over 15-years old), do not reflect the most recent scientific data on wolves, and set recovery goals that are grossly inadequate.

The recovery plan for the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf, for example, calls for three groups of 10 breeding pairs of wolves. The recovery plan for the Mexican gray wolf is 25 years old, and contains only an interim goal of 100 wolves in a single area. And the recovery plan for the eastern timber wolf only commits to establishing one population of 100 wolves outside of Minnesota, completely ignoring the available habitat in the Northeastern U.S.

These plans are simply inadequate to ensure a lasting future for wolves in the United States, which would require multiple, connected populations, and several thousand individual wolves.

That's why I strongly urge your agency to adopt the national wolf recovery plan put forth by Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Such a plan would help ensure a lasting future for wolves in the Northern Rockies and provide a needed boost for wolf recovery and management efforts in the Southwest, Northeast and Pacific Northwest.

Thank you for considering my comments.