It takes rather a lot of ignorance or apathy to refer to a Federal Court Ruling as "silly." I actually did read the ruling. Did Durkin? [Patrick Durkin: Wolf Ruling Disregards Reality on the Ground, Wisconsin State Journal, 12/28/14] The ruling states that USFWS was premature in removing protections as evinced by hostile state management policies already in place to be fast-tracked to law within moments of wolves being stripped of Endangered Species protection.
The ruling states the hunting methods, quotas and seasons are overly aggressive and replicate the means by which wolves were extirpated in the first place, thereby violating the rules of the Endangered Species Act. The ruling states the long term effects of aggressive hunting on the species are not well known. The ruling suggests more effort is needed to promote tolerance (clearly, killing more wolves does not accomplish this).
It takes little exercise of intellect to marginalize those who wish to see a thriving wolf population able to exert the benefits apex predators bring to the deer-ravaged landscape as "wolf worshippers" ("humpers," "huggers," etc.), rather than to concede that a small, disproportionately influential contingent who call themselves "hunters" and "sportsmen" wrote legislation designed to reduce the WI wolf population by 55% within 5 yrs, the implementation of which returned ESA protections to wolves. Individual wolves, as social animals, DO "matter" -- all wildlife "matters" -- but killing over 500 Wisconsin wolves in three years -- 1500 throughout the Great Lakes states -- for no reasons other than "sport" -- and hate -- goes far beyond the question of the significance of individuals.
Illegal killing remains an enforcement issue, and a certain contingent viewing wolves as "forced" upon them is certainly nothing new.
There are severe flaws in logic in the Olson, et al. paper Durkin cites, not the least of which is the correlation between ESA status and illegal kills. In fact, recent research out of UW Madison, Dept. of Forestry and Wildlife Ecology demonstrates an increase in illegal kills during periods of State management. Additionally, recent research from the UW Carnivore Coexistence Lab documents an increase in hunters' intent to illegally kill wolves following the state's inaugural wolf hunt. But one thing the Olson paper gets right is the need for "soft release" from ESA protections. We didn't immediately start selling thousands of tags for Eagles once they were removed from Endangered status, because federal protections remain in place. This is an argument to be made in favor of "Perpetual ESA Status:" If we cannot change the attitudes that caused extirpation, we may have to leave protections in place, indefinitely, until we do.
Many "outdoors folk," are diametrically opposed to wolf hounding and trapping, and also opposed to biologically indefensible trophy killing. There is a rapidly declining contingent hanging onto an archaic view of "killing as conservation" which finds itself out of step with the North American Model for Conservation: If you're going to eat it, or it's invasive and out competing native species, by all means, remove it. Otherwise, Nature has proven a better "manager" of "resources" than, say, bear hounders are. I offer our artificially mismanaged overpopulation of White tailed Deer as evidence. Allowing an animal the chance to establish biological equilibrium in suitable habitat is by no means an attempt to "write laws to protect individual animals or entire species from every eventuality." Durkin refers here to the Judge's ruling that aggressive quotas combined with disease and illegal kills could jeopardize survivability through the mechanism of additive mortality and its negative influence on genetic availability. Durkin seems unwilling to admit that a species population of <500 may not be able to withstand the aggressive exploitation a species of 22,000, say, or even 2,000,000 might withstand, or possibly even benefit from, depending on the species. As UW Madison's Dr Tim VanDeelen had to explain recently to our current Wolf Advisory Committee: wolves aren't turkeys.
By Laura Menefee, Member, Protecting Native Forests & Wildlife Subcommittee