Wolf Agreement Nixed, Budget Resolution OKs Delisting

A rider to the finally adopted federal budget by Idaho Representative Mike Simpson has negated Saturday’s rejection of a settlement between environmental groups and the administration which would have removed wolves from the endangered species list and allowed Idaho and Montana to resume state management of wolf populations. Saturday, U.S. District Donald Malloy rejected the settlement, saying all the parties to the original suit did not agree to the settlement. Simpson’s budget rider, however, reinstates the 2009 decision by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to delist the gray wolf in Idaho and Montana. Pro-wolf organizations had agreed to the settlement in an attempt to head off the reinstatement of that decision based on the claims of hunters, ranchers and state officials that the wolf was a recovered population. Representative Simpson, as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on Interior and the Environment, had included the wolf provision in the original House budget resolution. Montana Senator Jon Tester supported Simpson’s rider saying it, “isn’t about one party’s agenda, it’s about what’s right for Montana and the West.”