THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 10, 1994 TAG: 9406100696
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: D1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940610 LENGTH: Medium
The proposal was referred earlier this week to the House Rules Committee, which usually means that the bill is in trouble, according to Rep. Zeno L. Edwards, R-Beaufort.
{REST} But even without the bill, Hyde County residents could see some changes in the federal government's management plan for red wolves in the near future, according to an official in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the federal agency which oversees programs for endangered species.
Mike Phillips, biologist with the Fish & Wildlife Service, said a new management plan for red wolves, in its final stages of development, should solve many landowners' concerns about the animals.
Under the pending change, landowners can use any non-lethal means to get a red wolf to leave their property if the wolf is causing a problem.
After Fish & Wildlife Service biologists have investigated, landowners will be given permission to kill the wolf if the problem continues, he said.
In Raleigh, the House Rules Committee was scheduled to meet Thursday at the end of the day's floor session and Edwards' red wolf bill was not on the agenda, according to one committee spokesman.
``The rules committee is the burial ground for a lot of things,'' Edwards said in an interview earlier this week. ``I hope they're not doing that with the red wolf bill because there are a lot of people interested in it.''
Even if the legislature approves the measure, Phillips said, landowners still would be prohibited from killing red wolves at will by federal law, which supersedes any state statutes.
This quarrel is the latest in a series between Hyde County officials and the federal government over a Fish & Wildlife program, based in Dare County, to release the red wolf in parts of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
At issue in Hyde County is a group of about 15 wolves that generally remains north of Lake Mattamuskeet near Fairfield, about a third of the 40 to 50 red wolves that have been released in Dare, Hyde, Washington and Tyrrell counties by the federal government.
But Troy Mayo, chairman of the Hyde County Board of Commissioners, said the wolves have wandered onto private lands in the county. They apparently have killed a herd of goats, killed and frightened hunting dogs and apparently have wandered onto at least one porch in the county, Mayo said.
Hyde County residents are afraid that if the red wolf returns in large numbers to the county, federal officials will restrict how residents can use their land, Mayo said.
Phillips said these fears are unfounded because the release of red wolves in eastern North Carolina has been designated as experimental by the Fish & Wildlife Service. This means that landowners are not subject to the same restrictions as they would be with other endangered species.
In recent years, Hyde County has had generally strained relations with the federal government, particularly the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
The county has repeatedly complained of being shortchanged by revenue sharing - the reimbursement paid to counties instead of property taxes for federally owned land. Local officials also said the county has suffered economic losses, and complained to the federal government about its reduction in Canada goose hunting.
While the red wolf once roamed widely in the southeastern marshes and forests, by 1980 the species was declared extinct in the wild and survived largely through captive breeding programs sponsored by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Locally, the red wolf program began in 1986 on what was then the Alligator National Wildlife Refuge. by CNB