Rancher Asks Judge
To Order Wolves Out

CASPER, Wyo. —(AP)— A Dubois-area rancher asked a federal judge Monday to remove wolves that have wandered south from Yellowstone National Park and are killing his cattle.

Stephen Gordon said he needed immediate relief. But U.S. District Judge William Downes continued the hearing until Aug. 24.

Gordon, owner of the Diamond G Ranch in northwestern Wyoming, is suing the Interior Department, which is in charge of the program that returned wolves to Yellowstone. The rancher wants Downes to immediately impose his Dec. 12 decision declaring the wolf program illegal.

Downes put his decision on hold pending appeals to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Gordon and ranch manager Jon Robinett said the four remaining wolves of the so-called "Washakie Pack" continue to kill cattle. They want the wolves killed.

"These wolves have got the ranch to the point that (we) can't ranch," Robinett.

He said he and ranch hands spend 10 hours a day watching out for the wolves.

Casper attorney Richard Day, who is representing Gordon, said his client does not want the wolves removed from Yellowstone, just the ranch.

Federal attorneys, however, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing its job managing the wolves.

"The plaintiffs are asking to step in and micromanage a highly successful wolf reintroduction program," said government attorney Kenneth Kellner.

Kellner said if Gordon can prove one more wolf kill, the government will get rid of the pack.

Canadian gray wolves were released in Yellowstone in 1995 to rebuild the population of the animal that is rare in the lower 48 states.

Downes denied a request in 1994 for a temporary injunction to keep the wolves out of Yellowstone. But in December, he ruled the three year-old program was illegal because it reduced protection for wolves that might migrate naturally to Yellowstone and Idaho, another release area.

The transplanted wolves do not have full federal protection and can be killed under certain conditions. The government invoked a clause of the Endangered Species Act that relaxes some of the restrictions to make reintroduction more acceptable.

In related matters, biologists have spotted what they believe is the first pup to survive among several born to Mexican wolves reintroduced into Arizona this spring.

"They saw two wolves emerge from some trees with a puffball following them," said Wendy Brown, a wolf recovery biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The puffball was a pup, apparently the first born to gray wolves in the wild to survive for any real length of time in nearly 50 years.

"The parents crossed a creek, but the pup stopped and whined," Brown said Friday. "Then the parents coaxed it across."

The pup, which was spotted last week in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, is believed to be nine to 11 weeks old and about 20 pounds.

The news came only two days after backers of the wolf reintroduction effort said they had given up hope that any of the pups born this spring had survived.

The last Mexican gray wolf seen in the wild was shot to death near Alpine, Texas, in 1970. They had been all but gone from the area since about 1950.

A U.S.-Mexican captive breeding program has brought their numbers to about 175. Eleven adults were released in Arizona on March 29.

The federal agency heralded the pup sighting as evidence that its controversial reintroduction program is working.

The six month-old program has been rocked by several setbacks. The first batch of offspring all died, and some of the adults have bounced between the wild and captivity. Another was killed by a camper.

"Having a pup survive to this point in the first year of the reintroduction effort is great news," said Nancy Kaufman, Southwest regional director for the service.