Yesterday I was happy when Oregon Wild reported that the Oregon Court of Appeals had reaffirmed a ban on killing two wolves in our state.
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This above-linked info about the continued stay on any wolf-killing by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) whetted my appetite for learning more about why the Court of Appeals slapped the wrist of ODFW and the Oregon Cattlemen's Assocation (OCA).
I wasn't surprised that Cascadia Wildlands, Center for Biological Diversity, and Oregon Wild won in court. I've been following this issue for quite a while, blogging recently about the absurdity of risking the recovery of an endangered Oregon species just because a few cattle have been predated upon.
So tonight I read the entire 16 page order of the Court of Appeals granting the stay extension pending judicial review of ODFW's kill-happy wolf policy. It's an impressive piece of legal work. Here's some highlights that I found particularly interesting.
Page 4. The court says that because the Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management plan was adopted in 2005, people have adjusted to these rules over the past six years. Legally, this puts more of a burden on the petitioners (Oregon Wild, etc.) who seek a stay of the wolf-killing. They need to show that a stay is necessary to prevent irreparable harm and that they're likely to prevail upon review. Bingo! The petitioners showed both things.
Page 5. The court found that, more likely than not, there are 23 gray wolves in Oregon -- more than the petitioners contended, and less than the OCA argued. The goal of the Wolf Plan is to have seven breeding pairs producing two pups a year over a span of three years.
Page 6. But currently there are only two breeding pairs of wolves in Oregon, one of which would have been destroyed if the ODFW kill order of an alpha male had been allowed to happen. Plus, the court found that this alpha male, which has a radio collar, couldn't have killed the cattle which spurred the kill order request by a rancher. The wolf has an perfect alibi: no radio-collared wolves were in the area of the kill. Yet somehow ODFW and the OCA want to kill the alpha male anyway, making the court go "huh?"
Page 8. The court agreed with the petitioners that the focus of the Wolf Plan isn't on sheer numbers of wolves in Oregon, but on breeding pairs. Again, why destroy one of two current breeding pairs, especially since the male wolf that ODFW and OCA seek to kill wasn't responsible for cattle deaths? And here's an important finding by the court which I'll quote verbatim:
As petitioners argue, as predators at the top of the food chain, wolves play an important and unique role in maintaining the balance and health of Oregon's natural environment, and contribute to biological diversity. The court also recognizes that neither petitioners nor their members can be compensated by money damages for the killing of even one wolf. Petitioners also have shown that denying a stay likely will cause irreparable harm to the Imnaha pack itself for the immediate future, and may cause irreparable harm to the reestablishment of the species as a whole in Oregon, at least for the reasonably foreseeable future. To that extent, petitioners have established irreparable harm.
Ranchers want to be compensated for livestock losses. Fine. That's being done. But the court found that everyone who lives in Oregon and enjoys the reintroduction of wolves to our state is harmed by needless killing of these "important and unique" animals. And money can't remedy that harm.
Page 9. Oregon law says that no "person" can kill an individual member of an endangered species, which the gray wolf is. Yet ODFW says that, as a government agency, it isn't a "person," so it can kill away. That's bizarre reasoning. People do the killing for ODFW. The agency is run by people. Yet ODFW wants to be able to ignore the law against killing gray wolves, even though the species is endangered.
Page 11. ln a fine bit of ironic legal writing, the court said "It is not self-evident that killing individual members promotes conservation of the species..." However, ODFW argued that killing wolves is necessary to increase the number of wolves. Wow. George Orwell forecast "doublethink" in his 1984. ODFW has taken it to heart. Killing wolves is necessary to save them, the agency believes, because killing wolves keeps the Oregon Cattlemen's Assocation happy, and then they might support the Oregon Wolf Plan. Weird. Very weird. The court didn't fall for the weirdness.
Page 13. I guess ranchers aren't as tough as the image they like to project. The Oregon Cattlemen's Association argued that ranchers are suffering emotionally as they worry about their livestock being killed by wolves, and by their supposedly huge financial losses from wolf predation. Oh, poor ranchers. The truth is that since 2006 there were 65,000 cattle and calf deaths in Oregon, 94% from non-predator causes. In 2011 there has been less than 20 confirmed cattle deaths by wolves.
Page 15. Oregon already has a program for compensating ranchers for cattle killed by wolves. So why should wolves be killed, when ranchers are being paid for the loss of their cattle? Since the Department of Agriculture doesn't seem to have implemented the compensation program yet, the court ordered the petitioners to put up $5,000 to pay for any cattle killed by wolves. That should be no problem. I'd be happy to contribute to the fund.
Bottom line: The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Oregon Cattlemen's Association, got slapped down by the Court of Appeals. The judges found that Oregon Wild and the other petitioners have a good chance of winning their case, and I agree.
Killing members of an endangered species in order to conserve the species doesn't make any sense. I bet the Oregon Wolf Plan will have to be amended to reflect that obvious fact.
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