KVRI asks for info on wolverine listing |
| March 20, 2013 |
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The Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative will
host a public meeting at 6 p.m. Monday, April 1,
at the Kootenai River Inn, and they've requested
that U.S. Fish and Wildlife staff from the North
Idaho field office attend to provide a briefing
on their proposal to list the North American
wolverine as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act. An estimated 250 to 300 wolverines now occur in the lower 48 states, where the species has rebounded after broad-scale predator trapping and poisoning programs led to its near extinction in the early 1900s. This was in part due to the states protecting the species from unregulated trapping. Currently, wolverines occur within the North Cascades Range in Washington and the Northern Rockies of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and a small portion of Oregon. Under the proposal, made February 1, the USFWS does not consider most activities occurring within the high elevation habitat of the wolverine, including snowmobiling and backcountry skiing, and land management activities like timber harvesting and infrastructure development, to constitute significant threats to the wolverine. As a result, the Service is proposing a special rule under Section 4(d) of the ESA that, should the species be listed, would allow these types of activities to continue. “This proposal would give us the flexibility to tailor the protections for the wolverine provided by the ESA to only those things that are necessary,” said Noreen Walsh, director of the Service’s Mountain-Prairie Region. To read the full story on the proposal, click here. |