Who cares about the safety of himan beings -- the wolves must be restored!

A federal judge Friday ordered the Bush administration to step up efforts to restore the gray wolf to New York and three other northeastern states, a ruling that environmentalists called a major victory.

"The wolves are howlin' " in celebration, said Patrick Parenteau, director of the environmental law clinic at Vermont Law School.

Judge J. Garvan Murtha found that the Interior Department violated federal law in 2003 when it issued a rule saying no further efforts to restore the wolf were needed.

The ruling also covers Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Efforts to restore wolves had been successful in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The government wanted to lump those states in with the Northeast in a new, 21-state eastern region, and declare that enough had been done to restore wolf populations throughout the eastern United States.

Anthony Tur, a Fish and Wildlife Service field officer in Concord, N.H., said the agency's headquarters in Washington would decide whether to appeal the ruling.

He questioned the push to build gray wolf populations in the Northeast, saying public support for such a move was unclear. He also cited disagreement in the scientific community about whether gray wolves ever populated the region.

Environmental groups argued that good wolf habitats are available in northern Maine and New York's Adirondack Mountains and that northern Vermont and New Hampshire likely would become an important corridor for wolves migrating between the two areas.

And here I was hoping for releases in Chappaqua, Harlem, and Manhattan.

Posted by: Greg at 03:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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