Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I come here today on behalf of myself and my colleague, Senator Crapo, from Idaho to introduce the State Wolf Management Act. This act as drawn is aimed at some particular issues we have in Idaho with the management of wolves, and that other adjoining States that share Idaho's boundaries have with the Federal Government.

First of all, I want to thank the Governor of the great State of Idaho, the Honorable Butch Otter, for his assistance in crafting this bill. I can tell you, Governor Otter, as the chief executive of Idaho, his predecessor, who happens to be yours truly, and my predecessor, as Governors of the great State of Idaho have all joined in the effort to obtain delisting of the wolf in Idaho. That is particularly true as we attempt to wrest management of this particular species away from the Federal Government.

What the act does is it identifies as a distinct population a segment of the gray wolf population. Specifically, it identifies this specific population in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon, in which there are few if any wolves, and the State of Montana and the State of Idaho, all of those States in which there are a lot of wolves and indeed are too many wolves.

First of all, let me say, the official estimates, in 2008, for Idaho are that there were 846 wolves in Idaho, with 39 breeding pairs. Virtually everyone in the State agrees that estimate is very low. In the year 2010, again virtually everyone agrees there are well over 1,000 gray wolves in Idaho and well over 39 breeding pairs.

How did we get to where we are?

Wolves have been gone from the State of Idaho and adjoining areas for many years. In 1995, someone--I cannot identify who--in their infinite wisdom, who lived back here on the banks of the Potomac River, decided we in Idaho needed wolves again.

The State of Idaho was indeed not very happy about the decision. The chief executive of the State, the executive branch of the State, the legislative branch of the State, and the vast majority of Idahoans were absolutely opposed to reintroducing wolves back into the State of Idaho.

After litigation, and after the usual things you go through, nonetheless, 34 wolves were captured in Canada and brought to the State of Idaho and introduced into the State of Idaho against the objections of almost everyone. Indeed, there was a group of people who did want to see wolves brought to Idaho, and they got their way.

To give you a little bit of background as to what happened, we in the State of Idaho are very proud of our big game management. Under common law in this country, and indeed in England before this country, all wild game belonged to the sovereign. The United States of America is probably surprised to hear they are not the sovereign, that indeed the States are the sovereign. As a result of that, over the centuries--the couple of centuries we have been in existence as the United States of America--litigation after litigation has determined that indeed all wildlife in the State belongs to the sovereign; that is, the State in which they are located.

Idaho has a long and proud history and culture of hunting and outdoor life. We have managed our wildlife to the point that we are getting--or had been getting--the maximum out of our wildlife for big game harvest every year. Before Europeans inhabited Idaho, there were very few deer and even less elk. Elk were a plains species. They were not a mountain species. After settlement of the State, the elk were pretty much removed from the plains and took up residence in the mountains, where they have done very well and adapted very well.

Again, over the years, the premier species in Idaho, as determined by the people of the State of Idaho, has been elk. Elk are difficult to manage; that is, they are not as easy to manage as deer. They are not as prolific as deer. As a result, they require relatively intensive management.

As a result, the State has broken into many different game units for elk, and each of these units is carefully managed by the fish and game department to determine the birthrate of the elk each year and the survival rate over the winter and a determination of how many elk can be harvested. As a result, we have had a robust and relatively stable population of elk in the State of Idaho.

Fast forward to 1995. The Federal Government released its 34 wolves into the State of Idaho, and contrary to what some people believe, they are not vegetarians. Also contrary to what some people believe, they need to eat every day. And when they eat, they eat our elk.

As a result, there has been considerable depredation on our elk herds and for that matter on domestic livestock. The domestic livestock losses are not large in number, unless, of course, it is your livestock they are preying on, of which a number of us in the livestock business have experienced losses in that regard.

Back to the elk. We want to continue to manage our elk. We want to continue to manage our deer. Indeed, we manage a lot of big game species.

We manage moose, we manage bears, we manage cats, we manage all big game in the State of Idaho and do a pretty decent job of that.

On top of the Federal Government's introduction of these 34 wolves into Idaho, which have now exploded into 1,000 wolves, with regulations that at the outset were very, very intrusive, to the point where you couldn't shoot wolves--even if you found them attacking your livestock, it was unlawful to take a wolf. Of course, the regulations that were imposed on us by the Federal Government have created a considerable amount of animosity and bad blood.

What we want at this point is the ability to manage the wolves just as we manage every other population of big game and animal species in Idaho. The fact is that the wolves are there. They are going to be there. We obviously made the effort at the outset to not have them. We did our best to keep them out. We lost that fight, so now we have to accept the fact that they are there. But the fact that they are there does not mean that we, in the sovereign State of Idaho, should not have the ability to manage our own game species.

Recently, because the numbers have exploded in the amount that they have--when I was Governor, I pressed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to start the delisting process, which happened on my watch. The start of the delisting happened on my watch as Governor. As time went on, my successor, Governor Otter, did an excellent job of continuing to press the case for delisting. After all, the Federal Government has absolutely no business in the State of Idaho dealing with wolves other than the hook it has of the Endangered Species Act. To argue that a species that has been introduced--34 of them--and then explodes to well over 1,000 is endangered simply flies in the face of not only science, but it also flies in the face of logic.

Let me tell my colleagues what we were told and what we were promised by the Federal Government at the time they brought in the wolves. They told us that once we got to the point of 300 wolves and got to the point of 30 breeding pairs, the party was over and they would delist. Well, we reached that point in 3 years, and we have been trying to delist ever since. We got them delisted. The matter went to court. We actually had a hunting season last year. But now it has gone back to court, and, again, those who are trying to protect the number of wolves, to the great disadvantage of elk, won again, and they got the judge to order that the wolves be listed again in Idaho and Montana.

That is as a result of a dispute the State of Wyoming also has with the Federal Government, and they have been unable to reach an agreement as to how wolves should be managed. The Federal Government, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Department of the Interior were perfectly happy with the plans from Idaho and Montana, but because they have been unable to settle with Wyoming, we now find ourselves at a tremendous disadvantage. This simply isn't fair.

This bill will very simply turn management of the wolves back over to the State of Idaho unless and until the time that the Federal Government can again or can ever claim that they are an endangered species. When that happens, the State again will be subject to the lawsuits that will inevitably come if, indeed, they are endangered. But in the meantime, I will urge every Senator to vote for this bill. This is a States rights issue. We are a sovereign State. We are entitled to take over management of these wolves. I can promise everyone that the State of Idaho will do a substantially better job, a cheaper job, and a much more efficient job of managing the wolves in the State of Idaho than the Federal Government could ever do or will ever do, and we will be able to do it with due deference to all the other species in the State of Idaho.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source