Today is the final day of the public comment period for the state’s proposed gray wolf management and conservation plan.
Harriet Allen, state Department of Fish and Wildlife endangered species section manager, did not know how many comments have come in for the statewide plan.
She said they will be organized in the next month before the department analyzes and responds to them.
By year’s end
The findings will be forwarded to the state’s Working Wolf Group, which will formulate an Environmental Impact Statement by the end of the year.
A public hearing in November in Sequim, the only one on the North Olympic Peninsula, brought out citizens both in support of and opposed to the reappearance of wolves on the Peninsula.
A Port Angeles woman who goes by Devon Graywolf sang a song in support and has gathered signatures in favor of the plan as part of a group she formed called Olympic Mountain People.
In a few days outside the Port Angeles library in December, she collected more than 40 signatures in support of the wolves.
Graywolf said she was active in environmental groups in Eugene, Ore., before moving to Port Angeles recently on a “vision quest.”
“They need to be here,” she said of the wolves. “They help to restore the balance on the planet — the universe sees that.”
Wolves, which disappeared from the state decades ago, have been migrating into the eastern Washington from reintroduction projects in Idaho and Wyoming.
Almost 100 years
Wolves have not been seen on the North Olympic Peninsula for nearly a century.
The state plan could eventually relocate them to the Peninsula.
But don’t pen up the sheep just yet.
There are now two wolf packs in Washington state: six wolves in Okanogan County and five wolves in Pend Orielle County, both in Eastern Washington.
If they show up in Clallam and Jefferson counties, it will probably be because numbers have increased enough in other parts of the state to move them to areas where they no longer exist.
If wolves don’t manage to cross Puget Sound or the I-5 corridor on their own to settle on the Peninsula, it’s possible they could be bused in, so to speak.
They wouldn’t be reintroduced. That terms is used when animals are brought into the state from elsewhere.
Instead they would be “translocated,” meaning they would be moved from one part of the state to another.
“Translocation” would not occur until there are at least 15 breeding pairs in the state. That number could take wolves off the state endangered species list.
According to the state Fish and Wildlife Department, gray wolves were classified as endangered in Washington state at the federal level in 1973 and at the state level in 1980.
They were delisted under federal law in 2009 in the eastern third of Washington and remain federally listed in the western two-thirds of the state; they continue to be listed by the state throughout its borders.
Under the proposed plan, wolves would only be translocated out of a recovery region if that region exceeds delisting objectives, which are two pairs in Eastern Washington, two pairs in Northern Cascades, five pairs in Southern Cascades/ Northwest Coast and six pairs across the recovery regions, for 15 total.
The North Olympic Peninsula is included in the Southern Cascades/Northwest Coast region, which stretches from the east side of the Cascade mountain range, south to the Columbia River and north nearly to Puget Sound, and the entire coastline. It’s the largest region in the plan.
Translocation of wolves from one recovery region in Washington to another could speed up recovery and allow more flexibility to address conflicts, according to the plan.
Any proposed translocation to establish a new population would require a public review process through the State Environmental Policy Act — or SEPA — or National Environmental Policy Act — or NEPA — according to the Fish and Wildlife plan.
Alternatives
In the plan, the state prefers Alternative 2, which would:
• Expand efforts to restore wolf habitat, with an emphasis on adequate numbers in the region that includes the North Olympic Peninsula. This region, the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast, contains 16 counties with parts of four others. The eastern boundary follows a line from the Canadian border in Okanogan County south, while the east-west boundary follows Interstate 90.
• Outline criteria for both “nonlethal injurious harassment” of wolves and the killing of wolves at various levels of listed protection: endangered, threatened and sensitive.
• Outline state payment for livestock killed by wolves.
Alternative 1has a lower standard for protection of wolves and a more aggressive strategy for protecting livestock and other domestic animals against them.
Translocation could be used, but the alternative doesn’t require all regions of the state to be populated with wolves, so it probably wouldn’t be used.
Alternative 3 places the greatest emphasis on protection and restoration of wolves in the state and also offers the most generous compensation for livestock killed by wolves.
It would require wolves to be established in a Pacific Coast region — separate from the Southern Cascades — which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties, as well as five others and parts of three more.
Alternative 4 is to take no action.
Comments can be submitted electronically at http://tinyurl.com/ yecmj8o, by fax to 360-902-2946 or by mail to WDFW SEPA Desk, 600 Capitol Way N., Olympia, WA 98501-1091, postmarked by 5 p.m. today.
Information about the Gray Wolf Conservation and Management plan can be found at http://tinyurl.com/ya4mme7.
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Features editor Marcie Miller can be reached at 360-417-3550 or marcie.miller@peninsuladaily news.com.
