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A federal judge is [to] order the government to hold off on its plan to roll back measures to protect the red wolf in North Carolina. District Judge Terrence Boyle ordered Thursday that the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) hold off on its plan to remove wild red wolf populations from private land, unless they can show certain harms being caused by the wolves, in a major win for conservationists.
Boyle agreed with conservationists that the red wolf is in peril, and said they are likely to win on the merits in their challenge to the FWS's decision to stop the managed reintroduction plan for wild red wolves, and limit their population to a small swath of federal land. [...] "In November 2013, there were an estimated 100 red wolves in the wild with an estimated eight breeding pairs," Boyle said. "In March 2016, defendants estimated there to be only 45-60 red wolves in the wild. Such rapid population decline has been described as a catastrophic indicator that the wild red wolf population is in extreme danger of extinction."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:46AM
The wolf is an iconic, beautiful, proud symbol of the untamed wilderness ...
... what actual scientists studying the topic call charismatic megafauna. They look good on a billboard, or posters put up around campuses where the students don't know enough to be critical.
Unfortunately, one is given the impression here that it's war to the knife between the feds and the conservationists. This is simply not true. The federal organisations seeing to conservation are pretty comprehensively subject to regulatory capture by that exact pressure group, so much so that there's been repeated, blatant evidence of collusion between the so-called public servants and the conservationists, collaboratively using the courts to do end runs around congress. It works roughly like this:
Pressure group: "We want to save the tribbles!"
Feds: "We'd love to, but this bill out of Congress says that once they've reached stable numbers in a home range, there's no mandate to save them elsewhere."
PG: "Man, that sucks! We want that changed!"
F: "OK, so tell you what. Here's our data, why don't you take us to court and attack this part of it. We'll fold there, and the court will tell us we can't not save the tribbles."
*court case ensues, with a result that's a foregone conclusion unless some external groups get to hear of it in time*
I've seen this play out in my neck of the woods (not the east coast) a few time with different species. They hate delisting species, because each delisted species is a loss of power to the bureaucrats, and a loss of leverage to the activists.
Now, it's just maybe possible that there is a genuine issue with red wolf numbers and they need more help. But that's not what I'd put money on.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday October 03 2016, @06:10AM
Your surmise about self-perpetuating bureaucracy... understates the case:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/epa-funds-greens-sue-221700941.html [yahoo.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.