Volume 39 Issue 3 Summer 1999 Summer 1999 Wolves, Politics, and the Nez Perce: Wolf Recovery in Central Idaho and the Role of Native Tribes Patrick Impero Wilson Recommended Citation Patrick I. Wilson, Wolves, Politics, and the Nez Perce: Wolf Recovery in Central Idaho and the Role of Native Tribes, 39 Nat. Resources J. 543 (1999). Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol39/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Natural Resources Journal by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. PATRICK IMPERO WILSON* Wolves, Politics, and the Nez Perce: Wolf Recovery in Central Idaho and the Role of Native Tribes ABSTRACT The gray wolf recovery effort in the northern Rocky Mountains is perhaps the most successful effort to promote the recovery of an endangeredspecies. Despite the success, wolf recovery is a highly controversialsymbol of a largerdebate over public lands policy in the West. This article examines the politics of gray wolf recovery and explains why Idaho refused to take part, thus allowing the Nez Perce Tribe to assume primary management of the recovery effort. The second part of the article explores the challenge and opportunity that wolf recovery presented for the tribe. The conclusion speculates on the policymaking implications of native tribes playing an expanded role in the management of natural resources. In January 1995, after an absence of over fifty years, the gray wolf was returned to the wilderness of central Idaho.