SEQUIM – A crowd of North Olympic Peninsula residents told state Department of Fish and Wildlife officials that gray wolves belong in Washington state – maybe even on the Peninsula.
“I want a bumper sticker that says ‘Wolves NOW,'” said Dennis Murray of Sequim, one of some 85 people who attended Fish and Wildlife’s Tuesday night “public scoping meeting” in Sequim on the drafting of a gray wolf management plan for Washington.
The discussion at Guy Cole Convention Center was one of seven held around the state this month.
In 1999, public outcry quashed plans to reintroduce wolves into Olympic National Park.
Tuesday night’s talk centered on the need for wolves to bring Washington’s ecosystems into balance again.
Today, neither the state nor the federal government have any plans whatsoever to reintroduce wolves anywhere in the state.
But they are coming anyway, moving into the northeast corner of the state from British Columbia and Idaho, said Harriet Allen, Fish and Wildlife’s threatened and endangered species manager.
“It’s just a matter of where and when,” she said, adding that a wolf was sighted recently in Pend Oreille County, on the other side of the state from Jefferson and Clallam counties.
Bill Liggett of Eatonville in Pierce County came to hear about Washington’s wolf management plan because he “wanted to be part of something good.”
He touted reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park, saying it “enhanced the ecosystem” by bringing a native species back into the food chain.
