5-23 FB Ed Retires

 Ed the “Wolf Man” Bangs retires. From the Victoria Advocate.com. these words. Ed Bangs, who for 23 years led the effort to reintroduce and recover healthy wolf populations in the northern Rocky Mountains, is retiring from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in June.

 “ I’ve been working with the fish and wildlife service for 36 years and I have been working on Wolf recovery issues for 23, I will turn 60 in June and I think it’s a good time for me to start thinking about doing other things. I have a wonderful career, I’ve had a blast.  Lots of fieldwork in Alaska, got to meet and work with some wonderful people all over the world, the last few years with the delisting and all of the litigation have been pretty rough so I think it is time for me to do something else and let other people take over and I am proud and pleased that wolves have been delisted and the delisting is based upon good science so I think our 2009 rule was scientifically valid and the fact that it is in place and Montana and Idaho will do a good job as well as other states in Wolf management, it is pretty easy to leave knowing that it is in such good hands.”

As the federal agency's wolf recovery coordinator, Bangs was the face of the polarizing wolf reintroduction, conducting thousands of international, national, state and local interviews and holding hundreds of highly charged meetings, all to explain the effort as part of a massive public outreach effort.