Let the wolf hunt begin! Judge stays injunction to stop wolf hunting season!

SEATTLE: Bow-and-arrow hunters already have shot 17 of Montana's once-threatened wolf population since a controversial hunt started at the beginning of September, while 60 wolves have been killed in neighbouring Idaho.

Now, big game rifle-hunting season is about to start, bringing thousands of hunters into the mountains at a time when early snowfall will make wolves much easier to spot and chase.

Conservation groups went to court this week seeking an emergency injunction to block the hunts until a federal appeals court can decide whether they're legal to begin with.  ''General rifle season is about to start in Montana; it just started in Idaho. About 37,000 people now have wolf-hunting permits, and they're going to be going with high-powered rifles and long-range scopes after a little more than a thousand wolves,'' Michael Garrity, executive director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said in an interview.

He said a coalition of groups, including Friends of the Clearwater and WildEarth Guardians, had asked the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on an emergency order, pending a hearing next month on claims that the fast-track federal legislation that authorised the hunts is illegal.

The court denied the request for an immediate stop, ruling the ''motion for injunction pending appeal will be considered at the time of oral argument on November 8, 2011''.   ''With the snow about to fly … the very survival of Northern Rocky Mountain wolves may be at stake,'' Wendy Keefover of WildEarth Guardians said in a statement.

There are about 1400 wolves in the two states, a number the US Fish and Wildlife Service concluded is adequate to allow a hunt and still sustain the population.

Many residents of Idaho and Montana say the predator numbers have become so large while wolves were protected under the Endangered Species Act that livestock are threatened and herds of game animals such as elk are declining.

After repeated delays in getting federal wolf protections lifted, federal politicians from Idaho and Montana in August attached a rider to the must-pass federal budget bill that eliminated protections and cleared the way for the hunts.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Montana upheld the wolf delisting, but conservationists argued he was bound by precedent and did so only reluctantly.

''Inserting environmental policy changes into appropriations bills may be politically expedient, but it transgresses the process envisioned by the Constitution by avoiding the very debate on issues of political importance said to provide legitimacy,'' Molloy wrote.

''Policy changes of questionable political viability, such as occurred here, can be forced using insider tactics without debate by attaching riders to legislation that must be passed.''