SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The state's controversial plan for managing wolves is scheduled to get a final public meeting in Spokane on Thursday, in a meeting that was moved after residents objected to the original location of Olympia.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will discuss the proposed plan and also take public testimony at the meeting. The agency had planned to conduct the meeting in the state capital to save money, said Madonna Luers, spokeswoman for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
"The commission heard from a lot of constituents that 'wolves are in Eastern Washington and you should have the meeting over here,'" she said Wednesday.
With three of the state's five confirmed wolf packs residing north of Spokane, commissioners are likely to get an earful about the commission's proposal to wait until there are 15 successful breeding pairs in the state for three consecutive years before removing endangered species protections from the animals.
Farmers and ranchers have already criticized the plan in previous meetings as putting their livestock and livelihoods at risk.
In October, two groups filed a petition with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to strip endangered species protections from gray wolves in the eastern third of the state. The Washington Cattlemen's Association and the Hunter Heritage Council want wolves to be classified as a game species and hunted.
But conservation groups have supported the plan, and Luers expected speakers at the Spokane meeting to be about evenly split.
"This is a subject that I haven't found too many people in the middle on," Luers said.
The state Department of Fish and Wildlife released a proposed management plan, five years in the making, earlier this summer. The commission is expected to take final action on the plan at its December meeting.
Gray wolves were eliminated as a breeding species in Washington by the 1930s. They have never been reintroduced to Washington but numerous sightings over the years suggested that the animals had crossed into Washington from neighboring states and British Columbia.
Gray wolves are listed as an endangered species statewide under Washington law, and in the western two-thirds of the state under federal law. There currently are five confirmed resident wolf packs, all in Eastern Washington.
Under the agency plan, five breeding pairs would be required in Eastern Washington, four in the North Cascades and six in the South Cascades or Northwest Coast.
Two of the state's confirmed wolf packs reside in north-central Washington's Methow Valley and the Teanaway Valley of Kittitas County. The other three wolf packs reside in the northeast corner of the state.
Efforts to save wolves have been controversial throughout western states in recent years. Earlier this year, Congress stripped federal endangered species protections from wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming and the eastern one-third of Washington and Oregon. Wolves are still under federal endangered species protections in the western two-thirds of those two states.
The state's plan is a blueprint toward eventually delisting wolves and considering them as a game species that can be hunted.
"We decided four years ago that we needed a management plan because with wolves inevitably comes conflict because they eat things," Luers said.
It is unclear how long it would take to build to 15 packs, scattered across Washington, but it will take years, Luers said.
The biggest error about wolf management is that wolves have been reintroduced into Washington by humans, she said.
"No one has ever reintroduced wolves to Washington," Luers said. "There is no reason to. They are naturally returning to this area on their own."
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