Wolf advocates warn delisting will lead to 'blood bath'

Tala and Nakai are sister and brother, 5½ weeks old and adorable.

The wolf pups from the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center in Divide made their first public appearance Thursday, starring in a wildlife exhibition at The Broadmoor, but Darlene Kobobel, their caretaker, is worried this will be an ugly spring for the pups' wild-born brethren.

After years of debate, court cases and bureaucratic wrangling, on May 4 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is due to remove gray wolves from the endangered and threatened species list in Idaho, Montana and parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington. Wolves will remain protected in Wyoming.

Kobobel is using her furry ambassadors to speak out against the delisting, and urges visitors to the center to write or call U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to protest the decision.

"As a wolf and wildlife center, I felt I couldn't stand back and not do anything," Kobobel said. "I'm hoping these babies can help be a voice."

Kobobel said the delisting could lead to immediate government-sponsored hunts and culls, at least in some of the states. This time of year, she said, killing the adults would leave pups like Tala and Nakai to starve in their dens.

"It will literally be a blood bath," she said. "I'm not saying never kill a wolf, ever. I'm saying, there are better ways to do it."

From the government's standpoint, however, removing wolves from the list is a success story - the culmination of years of careful, and highly controversial, reintroduction. More than 1,600 wolves now roam the northern Rocky Mountains. That's far above the 300-wolf minimum goal established by the recovery plan adopted in 1987, a mark that was achieved in 2001. In states where they will be delisted, wolf management plans aim to maintain a stable population size, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In Montana, for instance, that state's fish, wildlife and parks department said in a news release that it wants a stable population of 400 or more wolves, compared with a current population of about 500. Idaho has a population of about 850 wolves currently, with a target range of 500 to 700.

Even with wolves coming off the protected list, there won't be a full-fledged hunt - not yet, anyway. Montana and Idaho both plan to hold wolf-hunting seasons in the fall, although quotas haven't been set yet.

The management plans, particularly Idaho's, aren't thorough enough to satisfy conservation groups, who plan to file a lawsuit and seek an injunction, said a spokesman for the group Defenders of Wildlife. A similar injunction last year successfully postponed the delisting until this May. The case won't go to court until June 4, so there will be at least several weeks where the wild wolves will be unprotected.

Tala and Nakai are cute but unintended results of an accidental pregnancy of Koda, one of the wolf center's females, Kobobel said, who was supposed to be too young to breed. The center tries not to add to the state's captive wolf population, Kobobel said, but now that they're here, the pups will spend their lives at the center.

And maybe they'll change a few minds along the way.

Wolf Protection

You can visit timber wolf puppies Tala and Nakai at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, located on Lower Twin Rocks Road in Divide. Admission is $10. Go to wolfeducation.org or call 687-9742 for information.

For information on the decision to remove wolves from the threatened and endangered species list in some western states, go to fws.gov/endangered.

-
Call the writer at 636-0275