Media Get To Cover Release Of Wolves p. 21

By: M.L. Stein

WOLF TRANSPLANT supporters and the press recently won their cases when eight of the animals were released in Yellowstone National Park, and a local pool of reporters was there to cover it.
It almost didn't happen. The wolves, which were transported from Canada, were kept in boxes while the U.S. Court of Appeals decided on a motion by ranchers' groups to prevent the predators from being set free in the park. They once roamed the area in great numbers until a government-supported plan of extinction wiped them out. The ranchers fear the gray wolves will kill their sheep and cattle.
But the court ruled in favor of restoring the wolves to the park, creating a media event that drew a crowd of officials, including U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who helped lug a caged wolf in connection with the release.
Two pool reporters were selected: Seattle-based Associated Press reporter David Foster and Angus Thuermer, of the Jackson Hole (Wyo.) News. Lacy Atkins, of AP's San Francisco bureau, was the general pool photographer, and Bob Zellar, of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette, shot for the local press. The regional newspeople drew lots for the pool position. The rest of the press operated from a media center in the park.
Initially, the National Park Service (NPS) picked a pool that included only the AP and an NBC-TV News crew. Led by Michael Milstein of the Billings Gazette, reporters from papers in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado, who have been covering the wolf controversy for months, wrote to Yosemite National Park superintendent Mike Finley, protesting an "inequity" in their exclusion from the pool. NPS thought it over and enlarged the pool.
But, as it turned out, no pool member saw the release of the wolves from their cages into a one-acre pen, where they will remain about a month so they can become oriented to the area.
"They [biologists] let them out at night, and we were told they didn't think it necessary to let us know because we wouldn't be able to see anything," said Milstein, who also strings for the Los Angeles Times.
The media were allowed to view the wolves ? from a distance ? the following morning, Milstein added. Biologists have urged minimal human contact with the wolves while they get used to their new surroundings.
"If the biologists had their way, there wouldn't be a soul covering the wolves," said NPS' chief information director Joan Anzelmo.
Four other wolves, also captured in Canada, were relocated to central Idaho. More animals will be shipped from Canada for distribution in the Rocky Mountain region, to restore the balance of nature as recommended by biologists.