HELENA – The state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks has eliminated the position of wolf coordinator and plans to assign other duties to Carolyn Sime, who held the post for the past decade.
FWP Director Joe Maurier said wildlife division employees have “been pressing me not to spend so much time on wolves.”
“They thought it should be blended with the wildlife program rather than having a specialist,” Maurier told the Independent Record Thursday. “We don’t have a grizzly coordinator or a deer coordinator.”
Sime did a fabulous job handling wolf management issues, especially considering how volatile and emotional the issue is, Maurier said.
“She’s a very talented person, and we just need to use her in other places,” he said.
Maurier says he hasn’t decided what work Sime will be doing. Possibilities include finishing a mountain lion study, updating a black bear management plan or looking more closely into chronic wasting disease, which is present in the states surrounding Montana, but is has not been detected here.
“I think she will enjoy getting away from wolves,” Maurier said.
Sime declined comment, other than to say she’s proud of the progress the state’s made in wolf management.
Sime’s duties, including putting together a weekly wolf update, attending meetings with the public and other state and federal agencies and coordinating wolf management activities, probably will be handled by either Ken McDonald, who heads FWP’s wildlife management bureau or Quentin Kujala, who oversees big game management in the state.
Work to reintroduce gray wolves, protected under the Endangered Species Act, began in 1994. Montana’s management plans called for a minimum population of 100 wolves with at least 15 breeding pairs. Montana has almost 500 wolves with about 45 breeding pairs.
Wolves have been delisted and returned to Endangered Species Act protection several times over the past few years, most recently in August when U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled that wolves could not be delisted in Montana and Idaho and remain protected in Wyoming, where state law is considered hostile to the species’ survival.
Idaho recently turned wolf management duties over to the federal government and Sime said last month that Montana had no plans to follow suit.
But Maurier said Thursday that nothing is set in stone.
“The governor is weighing all his options, and nothing is off the table right now,” Maurier said. “But management is staying with us for now, until the governor wants to do something else.”
Maurier said there is a team within FWP that will handle the ongoing legal battle over the gray wolves’ status and they’ll continue to tap in to Sime’s expertise as needed.