Font ResizeBOISE, Idaho » The Idaho Department of Fish and Game Commission voted 4-3 Monday for a plan to let hunters shoot 220 wolves during a hunting season due to start in September.
Environmental groups immediately said "hunting of an imperilied species at any level is inappropriate" and reiterated a threat to sue.
Idaho's policy to shoot about one-quarter of Idaho's estimated 880 wolves was approved during a meeting in Idaho Falls, though commissioners don't expect the roughly 70,000 hunters seen likely to purchase an Idaho wolf hunting tag will be successful enough to fill the quota.
The 220-wolf quota was approved after commissioners voted 4-3 against an alternative plan that would have allowed hunters to shoot up to 430, or 49 percent, of the predators.
Last month, wildlife officials in neighboring Montana voted to let hunters in that state shoot 75 wolves starting in mid-September.
Idaho Fish and Game Commission members said without a hunt, there will be about 1,020 wolves in the state at the end of 2009. They've concluded there are enough of the predators roaming Idaho's backcountry -- and straying into more urban locales like the resort region of Sun Valley -- that a hunt at these levels won't put the species' survival in jeopardy.
"It's time for some environmental groups to abide by their previous promises," said Fish and Game Commission Chairman Wayne Wright, from Twin Falls, in
Commissioners said they're sticking to their 2008 goal of eventually reducing Idaho's wolf population to about 518 animals, but said the threat of litigation -- and the conviction that hunters are unlikely to kill even 220 animals this year -- made aiming higher both potentially inflammatory and unrealistic.
"The pending litigation definitely had an effect on all of us," said Commissioner Tony McDermott of Sagle, when asked why commissioners didn't try to reach that target in a single year. "We're going to have to take a look inside our toolbox, take a look at how the hunter harvest looks this year."
Lawyers for 13 environmental groups that have sued over the federal government's May decision to lift Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in Idaho and Montana oppose such hunts, on grounds they could hurt efforts to help restore the animals' population.
On Monday, they told The Associated Press they'll be discussing the Idaho and Montana hunting quotas this week before making a decision on whether to seek an injunction in U.S. District Court in Missoula.
An injunction handed down in July 2008 prevented similar hunts from moving forward a year ago.
"Hunting of an imperiled species at any level is inappropriate," said Jenny Harbine, a lawyer with Earthjustice in Bozeman, Mont., which is handling litigation for the environmental groups. "The science tells us this wolf population will remain imperiled and even become more so under state management."
Harbine cited the 2008 federal court ruling that genetic exchange between individual populations of wolves dispersed throughout the region wasn't adequate. She contends increased mortality under state management would decrease the prospect of genetic exchange.
"Idaho's wolf hunt is only going to make the possibility for the dispersal and breeding less," she said.
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AP writer Todd Dvorak in Boise contributed to this report.
