Latest news with #NezPerceTribe
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump spikes NW salmon agreement
Jun. 13—President Donald Trump is killing the sweeping agreement that pledged significant investments in salmon recovery and could have paved the way for breaching the four lower Snake River dams. In a presidential memorandum issued Thursday, Trump directed members of his cabinet to withdraw from a legal agreement between the Biden administration on one side and Columbia River Basin tribes and conservation groups on the other. That pact exchanged a pause in fish-versus-dams litigation for investments in salmon recovery, tribal renewable energy projects and studies on the best way to replace the hydropower, irrigation and commodity transportation made possible by the dams. While the agreement stopped short of sanctioning dam breaching, it was designed to lay the groundwork for the move. Trump titled his memo "Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Generate Power for the Columbia River Basin." "My Administration is committed to protecting the American people from radical green agenda policies that make their lives more expensive, and to maximizing the beneficial uses of our existing energy infrastructure and natural resources to generate energy and lower the cost of living," Trump said in the memo. He also rescinded Biden's executive order issued in September of 2023 that called for a "sustained national effort" to honor treaty commitments to the Nez Perce and other tribes by restoring Snake and Columbia river salmon and steelhead to healthy and abundant levels. Shannon Wheeler, chairperson of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, said the move erases significant progress on the effort to save salmon and steelhead from extinction. The fish are central to tribal culture and economies throughout the basin and are cherished by many nontribal people as well. The nutrients they return from the ocean are viewed as important to inland aquatic ecosystems and the decline of chinook salmon in particular has been tied to the problems faced by endangered southern resident killer whales in Puget Sound. "This action tries to hide from the truth. The Nez Perce Tribe holds a duty to speak the truth for the salmon, and the truth is that extinction of salmon populations is happening now," Wheeler said in a news release. "People across the Northwest know this, and people across the nation have supported us in a vision for preventing salmon extinction that would, at the same time, create a stronger and better future for the Northwest." The deal between Biden and salmon advocates was expected to bring more than $1 billion in federal investments to help recover wild fish in the Snake and Columbia rivers and to help tribes develop renewable energy projects. The output from the energy projects would have been devoted to replacing power generated at the four lower Snake River dams. But the agreement was viewed by dam proponents as an unfair pact for which they had little input and one that threatened to upend river transportation and hydropower production. Dam supporters like Kurt Miller, executive director of the Northwest Public Power Association, cheered the move. A news release from his organization said keeping the dams "provides a lifeline for the Northwest's clean energy economy and its most vulnerable families." Miller and others claim the agreement was one-sided.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump withdraws from Biden-era agreement with Columbia Basin tribes, Washington and Oregon to restore salmon runs
Jun. 12—WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday withdrew from a 2023 agreement between the federal government, Columbia Basin tribes, environmental groups and the states of Washington and Oregon that sought to restore salmon populations and invest in clean energy production. A fact sheet released by the White House cast the executive action as part of Trump's effort to combat "radical environmentalism" and said it reversed a Biden administration policy that "placed concerns about climate change above the Nation's interests in reliable energy resources." The document doesn't mention Washington, Oregon or any of the tribes that agreed to halt two decades of litigation in exchange for more than $1 billion in federal funds for fish habitat and energy projects. "President Trump recognizes the importance of ensuring the future of wildlife populations in the Columbia River Basin, while also advancing the country's energy creation to benefit the American public," the White House fact sheet said. The move was hailed by hydropower industry groups and met with condemnation from the parties to the agreement, including the Nez Perce Tribe, the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. "This withdrawal is a necessary course correction toward energy reliability, affordability, and transparency," the Northwest Public Power Association said in a statement, noting that critics and some proponents of the agreement saw it as paving the way to eventually breaching the Lower Snake River dams. "In an era of skyrocketing electricity demand, these dams are essential to maintaining grid reliability and keeping energy bills affordable," said the association, which includes public utilities throughout the Northwest. "Preserving the dams provides a lifeline for the Northwest's clean energy economy and its most vulnerable families." The agreement included a plan for federal and state governments to assess options for replacing the energy generated by the four hydroelectric dams that have long been at the center of a battle over the impact of hydropower on salmon runs and the treaties that guarantee tribes the right to fish in their traditional territories. But it didn't authorize breaching the four dams, which would require action by Congress. Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe, said the Trump administration's action "tried to hide from the truth." "The Nez Perce Tribe holds a duty to speak the truth for the salmon, and the truth is that extinction of salmon populations is happening now," Wheeler said in a statement. The Nez Perce, like other Northwest tribes, ceded most of its territory in an 1855 treaty with the U.S. government. In exchange, the federal government pledged that the tribe's members would always be able to hunt and fish in their "usual and accustomed places" off the Nez Perce Reservation. "People across the Northwest know this, and people across the Nation have supported us in a vision for preventing salmon extinction that would at the same time create a stronger and better future for the Northwest," Wheeler said. "This remains the shared vision of the states of Washington and Oregon, and the Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Nez Perce tribes, as set out in our Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative. It is a vision we believe is supported, publicly or privately, by most people in the Northwest. And it is a vision underlaid by the treaties of our Northwest tribes, by the U.S. Constitution that protects those treaties, and by the federal statutes enacted by Congress to protect salmon and other species from extinction." The Yakama Nation said the decision to revoke the deal contradicts Trump's commitment to developing domestic energy. "The Administration's abrupt termination of the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement jeopardizes not only tribal Treaty-reserved resources but also the stability of energy, transportation, and water resources essential to the region's businesses, farms, and families," stated Yakama Tribal Council Chairman Gerald Lewis in a statement. "This agreement was designed to foster collaborative and informed resource management and energy development in the Pacific Northwest, including significant tribal energy initiatives." Several environmental and conservation groups denounced Trump's executive action as a missed opportunity. "The Trump administration is turning its back on an unprecedented opportunity to support a thriving Columbia Basin — and ignoring the extinction crisis facing our salmon," said Amanda Goodin, senior attorney at Earthjustice, a legal nonprofit that has represented plaintiffs in the long-running litigation over the Columbia Basin. Eric Crawford, Snake River campaign director at the conservation group Trout Unlimited, said the agreement "was the most promising framework to date for a durable, regional solution." "It recognized that salmon recovery must go hand-in-hand with support for Northwest agriculture, investments in transportation infrastructure, and a reliable and affordable clean energy future," he said in a statement. "The decision to terminate this agreement undermines years of collaborative work, halts momentum for progress, and erodes trust among the diverse stakeholders committed to a better path forward. Republicans and Democrats in Congress also weighed in on Trump's action. "Donald Trump doesn't know the first thing about the Northwest and our way of life," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement. "So of course, he is abruptly and unilaterally upending a historic agreement that finally put us on a path to salmon recovery, while preserving stable dam operations for growers and producers, public utilities, river users, ports and others throughout the Northwest. This decision is grievously wrong and couldn't be more shortsighted." Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, highlighted the role the Snake River dams play in international trade, by effectively turning the Snake and Columbia rivers into a series of pools between Lewiston, Idaho, and the Pacific Ocean that barges laden with goods can traverse. "Today's action by President Trump reverses the efforts by the Biden administration and extreme environmental activists to remove the dams, which would have threatened the reliability of our power grid, raised energy prices, and decimated our ability to export grain to foreign markets," Newhouse said in a statement. "I want to thank the President for his decisive action to protect our dams, and I look forward to continuing to work with the administration for the benefit of the Fourth District." Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, alleged that the Biden administration struck the deal in private without giving opponents a sufficient chance to weigh in. "The Biden administration's one-sided, backroom agreement blatantly disregarded the essential role the lower Snake River dams play and the Idaho communities that rely on them," Risch said in a statement. "Today's announcement by President Trump represents a return to sound science and common-sense. I've long fought the attempts by radical Democrats, unelected bureaucrats, and activist litigants to tear down our dams. Congress authorized these dams, and only Congress has the power to remove them." Abby Tinsley, vice president for conservation policy for the National Wildlife Federation, said the Trump administration "needs to do its part" to embrace solutions that would recover salmon populations while generating affordable renewable energy. "The Presidential Memorandum takes the region in the wrong direction, it pushes Columbia River salmon and steelhead ever closer toward extinction, and it puts taxpayers and ratepayers back on the hook for inefficient industry and failed salmon recovery efforts," Tinsley said in a statement. Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump breaks historic Columbia River deal between U.S. government, tribes, Northwest states
(Left) Powerlines above the Columbia River move electricity from the Bonneville Dam to customers across the region in Hood River County, Oregon, on Thursday, July 25, 2024. (Right) Portrait of Farley Eaglespeaker, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, sitting atop a fishing scaffold along the Columbia River, in Cascade Locks, Oregon on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. (Jordan Gale/Oregon Capital Chronicle) This is a developing story and may be updated A 'historic' deal made two years ago between the U.S. government, four tribes, Northwest states and environmentalists to put legal battles aside and invest in restoring endangered Columbia River fish runs is now off. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing the U.S. government from a Dec. 14, 2023 agreement to help restore salmon, steelhead and other native fish being decimated by federal hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River Basin. He also revoked a September 2023 presidential memorandum signed by former President Joe Biden meant to send Northwest tribes $200 million over 20 years to reintroduce salmon in habitats blocked by dams in the upper Columbia River Basin, calling the commitments 'onerous,' 'misguided' and saying they placed 'concerns about climate change above the nation's interests in reliable energy resources.' The 2023 agreement was reached after decades of legal battles that pitted the federal government against four Lower Columbia River tribes and environmental groups backed by the states of Oregon and Washington. Groups behind the suits said they would forge on, and legal battles will likely reopen. 'This move by the Trump administration to throw away five years' worth of progress is shortsighted and reckless,' said Mitch Cutter, a salmon and energy strategist at the Idaho Conservation League, in a statement. 'The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement was a landmark achievement between the federal government, states, Tribes and salmon advocates to find solutions for salmon and stay out of the courtroom. Now, it's gone thanks to the uninformed impulses of a disconnected administration that doesn't understand the Pacific Northwest and the rivers and fish that make our region special.' The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe were part of the deal. In negotiations, the tribes, along with the states of Oregon and Washington, are referred to as the 'six sovereigns.' Gov. Tina Kotek's office did not respond to a request for comment by Thursday afternoon, nor did representatives from the four tribes. Groups representing utilities, farmers, ports and others who rely on Columbia River dams for power, moving goods and irrigation, celebrated the executive order. 'As demand for electricity surges across the nation, preserving access to always-available energy resources like hydropower is absolutely crucial,' said Jim Matheson, CEO of the trade group National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, in a news release. At the heart of the issue are four Snake River dams that provide irrigation and emissions-free hydropower for nearby communities, but have also contributed to the near extinction of 13 salmon and steelhead populations that return to the Columbia Basin from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. The fish are important to tribal health and sovereignty and to basin ecosystems, and the declines are hitting southern resident orcas off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon that rely on salmon for food and that are federally listed as endangered. Environmental advocates, tribes and others have pushed to remove the four dams – Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite on the Snake River between Kennewick, Wash., and Lewiston, Idaho – to help the fish, including filing lawsuits. Earthjustice, an environmental law group, has led litigation against five federal agencies, seeking changes to dam operations in the Columbia River Basin to help protect salmon. The 2023 agreement, coupled with Biden-era climate and clean energy funding, was meant to pour more than $1 billion in new federal investments for wild fish restoration into the Columbia River Basin over the next decade, along with clean energy projects on tribal lands. It also included potentially breaching the four Snake River Dams to restore natural flows that could revive native salmon populations. Earthjustice Attorney Amanda Goodin said in a statement that they would not give up fighting in court to prevent salmon extinction in the Columbia River Basin. 'The Trump administration is turning its back on an unprecedented opportunity to support a thriving Columbia Basin — and ignoring the extinction crisis facing our salmon,' she said. 'Unfortunately, this short-sighted decision to renege on this important agreement is just the latest in a series of anti-government and anti-science actions coming from the Trump administration.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
River of No Return: How the Nez Perce Tribe stepped in to save wolf reintroduction in Idaho
After they were captured in Canada, the wolves released in Yellowstone National Park initially stayed in acclimation pens, like this wolf pictured in Crystal Creek on Jan. 26, 1996. (Photo courtesy of Jim Peaco/Yellowstone National Park) EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second installment of Howl, a five-part written series and podcast season produced in partnership between the Idaho Capital Sun, States Newsroom and Boise State Public Radio. Read the first installment by clicking here. NEZ PERCE RESERVATION, IDAHO – Long before the American government removed them both from their ancestral homelands, wolves and Native Americans coexisted side-by-side for centuries. Those connections run deep for Shannon Wheeler, the chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. Wheeler remembers growing up as a boy, hearing elder members of the Nez Perce Tribe tell stories about wolves. One story involves a young boy talking with his grandfather. 'They were talking and the grandfather told him that each of us have a wolf inside of us. We actually have two wolves inside of us. One's a good wolf, and one's a bad wolf. And they're constantly fighting one another. And the grandson asked him, 'Well, Grandpa, which wolf wins?' And he says, 'Whichever one you feed the most will win,'' Wheeler said. The story of the two wolves is one that Wheeler carries with him to this day. 'We're able to utilize that lesson and our teachings to our younger ones coming up as we continue to try to grow our people and to fit into part of a world that is outside of who we are and outside of our culture and so we need those strengths,' Wheeler said. 'We need to know that we're feeding the good wolf inside of us so that we are that strong.' In addition to the stories, some members of the Nez Perce Tribe develop even deeper spiritual connections with wolves. 'What I can tell you from my position as the Tribal chairman is the wolf has always played a significant part in who we are as people, based on even the names of our people,' Wheeler said. 'Many of our people have gone out for wéyekins … A wéyekin is something where you go and fast and you get your animal spirit, and it'll come to you. And sometimes it's a himíin, it's a wolf. Himíin is the name for us for wolf.' Nearly 70 years after the U.S. government drove the wolf population to near extinction in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, that spiritual connection is what led tribal members to work to bring the himíin back to Idaho, Yellowstone National Park and the West. This is the story of how the Nez Perce pulled off a task no one else wanted – and why they're still fighting for wolves today. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX For thousands of years the Nez Perce Tribe has lived, hunted, fished and traded in what are now parts of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming. Over time, members of the Nez Perce Tribe developed a deep connection to the land and animals, said Allen Pinkham, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe who was born in 1938. 'To us, we are given the opportunity by the Creator to occupy this land that we're at right now, and then we're supposed to take care of the land and all the species that we utilize because it's a life source,' Pinkham said. 'It's an opportunity to believe and have faith in your Creator. That's what we do, and we're supposed to take care of everything else, because it provides and sustains life for ourselves.' Today, the Nez Perce is a federally recognized tribe that has about 3,500 members and governs the Nez Perce Reservation that is located in north-central Idaho. The Tribe's headquarters is located in the town of Lapwai, Idaho, and the reservation sits on a fraction of the Nez Perces ancestral territory. Lapwai is a working-class town nestled in a valley and the reservation is a mix of grassland, forested mountains and rural communities anchored by the Clearwater River. An 1855 treaty between the Nez Perce Tribe and the U.S. government set aside about 7.5 million acres of land for the tribe. But after gold was discovered on the reservation, additional treaties shrunk its size to less than a tenth of what it was. It's now about 770,000 acres Thanks to bounties, trapping and widespread poisoning, by the 1930s the U.S. federal government all but killed off wolves that used to roam the U.S. Rocky Mountains from the Canadian border to Mexico. But in the 1990s the U.S. government undertook one of the most controversial wildlife programs in history – capturing wild wolves in Canada and reintroducing them in Idaho and Yellowstone National Jan. 14, 1995 – in the aftermath of a major snowstorm, Suzanne Asha Stone was part of a convoy of vehicles that made a white-knuckle drive across icy roads to release four wolves at Corn Creek at the edge of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Central Idaho. At the time, Stone was an intern on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf capture and reintroduction team. Conditions were so sketchy that some members of the team unbuckled their seatbelts as they worried about plunging into the freezing Salmon River below, Stone said. 'If you slid off the road into the river, you wouldn't have had time to disconnect your seat belt,' Stone said. 'It was kind of like the decision of what's the worst that could happen, and preparing for that.' Carter's Hope: After U.S. government killed off Western wolves, a bold experiment brought them back The wolves, which had been flown from Canada, were placed in kennels and driven in the back of U.S. Forest Service pickups to the Frank Church Wilderness. When they arrived at Corn Creek, the wolf team opened the kennel doors and immediately released the wolves into the wild. Those first four wolves reintroduced in Idaho had only been running wild for three days when the Idaho Legislature nearly derailed the entire operation. On Jan. 17, 1995, the Idaho Legislature rejected the Wolf Recovery and Management Plan developed by the Legislative Wolf Oversight Committee. The move blocked the state from leading wolf recovery in Idaho. And it left the federal government without a local partner to monitor and oversee the first wolf population to call Idaho home in more than half of a century. What happened next is a largely untold story of how the Nez Perce Tribe stepped in to save wolf reintroduction in Idaho. Even now, 30 years later, many people in Idaho don't know the role the Tribe played. Even as the Idaho Legislature said no to wolves, the Nez Perce Tribe was demonstrating its connection to wolves and investment in wolf reintroduction. Just before wolves were reintroduced to Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in January 1995, the late Horace Axtell, who was the spiritual leader of the traditional Nez Perce Seven-Drum religion, and Tribal member Allen Pinkham traveled to Missoula, Montana. Axtell and Pinkham came to offer blessings for the wolves that had been captured in Canada and were being kept in kennels at an airport hangar before their release. They met the wolves just before they were transported over the final leg of their journey for reintroduction. During the ceremony, Axtell welcomed the wolves back home to Montana, Idaho and Yellowstone. 'And so he sang a song for the wolves,' Pinkham said. About that time, the late Nez Perce leader Levi Holt traveled to Boise to meet with policymakers, said his nephew, James Holt. Levi Holt delivered a speech at the Idaho State Capitol pushing to have the Nez Perce Tribe take responsibility for the new wolf program in Idaho, James Holt said. 'My uncle Levi, being very active at that time, made that impassioned speech before decision makers to actually push them to have the Tribe be the managing partner for that reintroduction effort,' James Holt said. It worked. Because of the Tribe's connection to wolves and history of coexistence, the Nez Perce Tribe was ready to take over wolf reintroduction and conservation after the Idaho Legislature said no. 'The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was looking for a partner, and we became that partner,' said Aaron Miles Sr., who has worked as natural resources manager for the Nez Perce Tribe since 1999. Miles was still finishing his forestry degree at University of Idaho when the Nez Perce took over the program in Idaho. He took pride in seeing the Tribe taking a lead role in protecting a species that had shared a homeland with his ancestors. But Miles also heard plenty of stereotypes and lots of misinformation about the Tribe – even among college students he was helping tutor. 'I'd hear all the chatter about, well, can the Tribe do this? How can they do that?' Miles said. 'They're all these questions, and sometimes it was racist. It wasn't just the fact that they were asking an honest question. But it had to be like, 'OK, these Indians, this or that,' and here I am helping some of these guys with their homework, and that really upset me.' Biologist Marcie Carter is a member of the Nez Perce Tribe who served on the Tribe's wolf project starting in June 1997. Carter got her start while she was still a student at Lewis-Clark State College and helped put together the first wolf management plan. 'Our goal was to go into the field, find paired up wolves that potentially had pups, and document the reproduction of those wolves, and also count how many pups were out there,' Carter said. 'That summer I don't even recall how many, we probably had maybe five or six pairs of wolves that had puppies that year,' Carter said. 'So they started out very well.' Carter and another biologist spent their summer hiking around Central Idaho in places like Stanley and the Bear Valley area near the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, looking for wolves. The wolves had been fitted with radio collars that allowed the wolf project team to track their location. Typically a pilot and another team member would fly overhead, locate the wolves from the air and then use a radio to relay the animals' location to the biologists on the ground. At that point, the biologists would hike in and locate the wolves. 'We worked 10 days in a row, and then we'd take four days off,' Carter said. 'And we camped out, we backpacked and lived in a tent and slept on our Therm-A-Rest and ate packaged noodles. And every day for those 10 days, that's what we were doing. We were up, out and looking for any type of sign of wolves.' Although she grew up in Idaho and had spent time in the woods, Carter hadn't really ventured into the wilderness until she joined the Nez Perce's wolf project team. Before setting out, she had to borrow a backpack, sleeping bag, tent and cook stove. A typical assignment during her first summer in 1997 involved flying into Central Idaho's remote Chamberlain Basin with a team of other biologists. Located within the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Chamberlain Basin was the site where one of the first wolf packs in Idaho established territory following the reintroduction of wolves. That pack became known as the Chamberlain Basin Pack. 'That was basically our lives during that time,' Carter said. 'It was just backpacking, walking, hiking, listening. It was a great time.' The reason they spent so much time in wolf country is because that is the best way to get an idea of how the wolves are doing and what they are up to. Carter and the team conducted howl surveys. With hands cupped over mouths, researchers threw their heads back and let out their best imitation wolf howls. They hoped to get live wolves to howl in response, which helped them track the wolves' location. 'Howl' is the largest investment in time and resources we've put toward one project at the Idaho Capital Sun. If you find value in what we do, you can support work like this with a one-time or recurring donation at To read the weekly installments of 'Howl,' released every Wednesday morning, sign up for our free email newsletter, To join us for our free live panel discussion 'Wolves in the West — 30 Years of Reintroduction and the New Threats Wolves Face Today' on June 17 at the Special Event Center in Boise State University's Student Union Building, register online. As the team hiked and drove across wolf country, they scoured the ground for wolf tracks and droppings that researchers call scat. They analyzed data from wolves fitted with radio collars. They documented the newborn pups. And they counted the wolves that were killed. Once a year the team packed all that data into a report documenting Idaho's wolf population. 'It was all very positive and very, very jaw-dropping type work,' Carter said. Although the wolf project started as a cool summer job for her, it became more than that. Carter soon began asking one of her grandfathers about wolves. Boise State Public Radio, Idaho Capital Sun partner for June 17 wolf reintroduction panel discussion They talked about how himíin, the Nimíipuu language word for wolf, comes from the word for mouth. That's because wolves talk to each other, Carter said, with their howls. When older members of the Nez Perce Tribe began to find out about the wolf project, they asked Carter about her work and shared stories about the Tribe's history. When they talked about losing wolves from the landscape, sometimes the older Nez Perce members talked to Carter about other losses the Tribe experienced. 'It was a learning experience for me, not just in the field, but culturally,' Carter said. 'It's just that it goes back to the loss of the connection that all Tribal people went through, with being moved to the reservation, being forced to stop speaking our language,' Carter said. 'It did kind of raise that awareness – also for other Tribal people – that loss that we had experienced and continue to experience,' Carter said. 'And then that reconnection – it happened with wolves. It's happening with salmon. Maybe someday it'll happen with grizzly bears.' Over six years on the wolf project, Carter documented growth and stabilization in Idaho's wolf population. And as she observed wolves in their natural habitat, Carter saw a very different side to the animals that people warned her about. 'I saw these families of wolves taking care of each other and playing, and they are not this evil that people think,' Carter said. During Carter's time monitoring wolves, the population increased significantly. Compared to the original 15 wolves released in Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in 1995, the Nez Perce Tribe reported a minimum of 192 wolves in the central Idaho recovery area in the fall of 2000. At the end of 2005 – a decade after wolves were reintroduced to Idaho – the Nez Perce team and Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists had identified 59 resident wolf packs in Idaho. Biologists observed a minimum of 370 wolves in 2005, and estimated the state's wolf population to be 512 in 2005. By 2005, wolf territory in Idaho stretched from near the Canadian border, south to Interstate 84 and east from the Oregon border to the Montana and Wyoming borders, the wolf team noted in its annual report. During 2005, Wildlife Services officials said 26 cattle, 218 sheep and nine dogs were reported as 'confirmed' or 'probable' wolf kills. As the number of wolves and wolf kills increased, so did the calls to remove the wolf from the Endangered Species List and turn management of wolves over to the states. Under the Endangered Species Act, animals that are listed in danger of extinction are given protections – like the protection of critical habitat and prohibitions on hunting – and recovery plans. For species protected by the Endangered Species Act, the animals' recovery and stabilization is the priority. Animal species that have been saved by Endangered Special Act protections include the bald eagle, the California condor, the whooping crane and grizzly bear, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Once species are removed from Endangered Species Act protections, regulations can be eased and states can approve hunting rules or other management and lethal population control methods. In January 2006, then-Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Interior transferring day-to-day management of wolves to the state of Idaho. After about a decade, the Nez Perce Tribes' role leading wolf recovery in Idaho had come to an end. 'I think we would have kept it, but the funding was going away, and so we did not have the money to keep a program going,' Carter said. 'And so I think the only way was basically to hand it over to the state.' By 2007, the state of Idaho was officially planning for its first wolf hunts since reintroduction in 1995. At that same time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife put forward plans to remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List. A series of legal battles ensued, where wolves were removed and then returned to the Endangered Species List. In January 2009, Samuel N. Penney, the then-chairman of Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, wrote a letter expressing the Tribe's full support for removing wolves from Endangered Species Act protections in Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, northern Utah and eastern Washington. Penney told then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that wolves met recovery goals for the Northern Rocky Mountain region in 2002. By 2008, Idaho's wolf population was estimated at over 800 wolves in 88 packs, Penney wrote. 'The Tribe wants, and understands that citizens of United States also want, wolves to be conserved,' Penney wrote. 'The Tribe is confident that you understand the importance we place on being able to make decisions locally about how to wisely manage this resource in combination with all our other wildlife resources.' Ultimately, wolves were removed from Endangered Species Act protections in 2011 after Congress inserted language into the federal budget requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove wolves in Idaho, Montana, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and north-central Utah from the Endangered Species List. By May 2011, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game had taken over management of wolves in Idaho, and put wolf hunting tags up for sale. Then in 2021, the Idaho Legislature expanded wolf hunting and trapping by removing the limit on the number of wolf tags hunters can buy, allowing trapping on private land year round and allowing the state to enter into contracts with third parties to kill wolves. The state of Idaho had officially set out to reduce the wolf population by killing the predators. Now Marcie Carter and other wolf advocates worry the government is starting to go down the same road it did 100 years ago when wolves were eradicated from the U.S. Rocky Mountains. 'We did all this great work, and we spent hours and hours out in the woods and then to come to this point where they're treated like vermin, it's really disorienting,' Carter said. 'It's definitely being undone,' Carter added. 'It's been being undone since we stepped out. It's very expensive to recover wolves and it's not very expensive to take them off the landscape.' Journalists Clark Corbin and Heath Druzin reported and wrote Howl over the course of 14 months, trekking deep into the backcountry in some of the most remote places in the Lower 48 chasing the story of America's wildest and most controversial wildlife comeback story – wolf reintroduction. New installments of the written series will be published in the Idaho Capital Sun each Wednesday through July 2. The Howl podcast is available free everywhere that podcasts are available. Upcoming Howl schedule: Wednesday, June 18: Fixing Yellowstone: How an intact ecosystem set the stage for a wolf queen's long reign. Despite being orphaned and repeatedly challenged for alpha status and ultimately being killed by a rival pack, Wolf 907 leaves a long legacy. Wednesday, June 25: Cattle Battle: How wolves and livestock collide – and how one Idaho project offers solutions. Western ranchers say their livelihood is at stake after wolves were reintroduced into the Lower 48 30 years ago. Wednesday, July 2: Ghost Wolves: While wolves might represent nature's greatest and most controversial comeback, some longtime wolf advocates say they aren't seeing wolves in the same places they always used to after the Idaho Legislature expanded wolf hunting and trapping in the state. Some scientists have openly questioned how the state of Idaho tracks and counts wolves, and some original members of the wolf reintroduction team worry 30 years of hard work to bring wolves back could be undone. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
E&E News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
Feds grant Idaho mine key water permit amid litigation
The Trump administration on Monday approved a key water permit for an open-pit mine in Idaho that's facing a legal challenge from conservation groups worried about the fate of protected species like chinook salmon. The Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act for Perpetua Resources' Stibnite gold project, which will allow the company to discharge dredged or fill material into federally protected waters as they build the open-pit project in the headwaters of the South Fork Salmon River. The project has secured billions of dollars in federal funding despite raising concerns among members of the nearby Nez Perce Tribe and conservation groups. 'We arrived at our decision after an extensive, multi-year review of the proposed project, including thorough evaluation of the environmental impact studies, and its effects to waters of the United States,' Lt. Col. Kathryn Werback, the Army Corps of Engineers' Walla Walla District commander, said in a statement. 'USACE staff collaborated closely with federal and state officials and consulted with Tribal governments throughout the process.' Advertisement The Army Corps grants permits under that section of the Clean Water Act to regulate discharges from construction activities into wetlands and streams. The agency said the permit includes 'special conditions ensuring no work will proceed until the U.S. Forest Service — the project's lead agency — finalizes the applicant's plan of operations.'
