('JIAFIER i: a.'RPOSI' \M» Ni 



riON 



Table I. The main issues identified througii public scoping, spring 2002, and their frequency. 



2. Comments colling for the removal of all wolves from the State of Montana, Yellowstone National 

 Park, and central Idaho. Related conmients suggested that wolves should not he permitted to enter 

 Montana from Yellowstone National Park. 



These issues were not considered further because they are outside the sideboards established by the 

 Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan, which calls for a viable, secure wolf population in 

 the northern Rockies, encompassing the states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. This EIS addresses 

 future conservation management of a recovered population, not whether wolf recovery and/or wolf 

 presence should be allowed in Montana or not. Wolves have been reported intermittently in Montana 

 for a long time and have been continuously present in northwestern Montana since the early 1980s. 



3. Comments suggesting that the gray wolf should be classified as a "predator" under Montana law and 

 managed as a bounty-animal. 



This i.ssue was not analyzed further because the "predator" classification under Montana law does not 

 meet the standard of an adequate regulatory mechanism that ensures a viable, secure wolf population 

 in the future. Wolves would not be delisted if assigned this legal classification under Montana 

 statute. Furthermore, the 2001 Montana Legislature determined that upon removal from federal and 

 state endangered species lists, wolves would be classified as a species "in need of management" in 

 Montana statute. The FWP Commission could reclassify the gray wolf as a game animal or furbearer 

 in the future when legal harvest, as a management tool, is determined to be biologically sustainable. 



