Feb 4, 2003 3 min read

HELENA, Mont. (AP) – Once driven to near-extinction in the Lower 48 states, the gray wolf is loping across the Northern Rockies in numbers not seen in a century, and the government is about to declare victory in its $17 million effort to bring the predators back. Possibly as early as this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will ease the federal protections that allowed the wolves to make a comeback. And as early as next year, all federal protections for wolves could be removed and their management turned over to the states.

Conservationists fear the move will only lead to the wolves’ numbers dropping off again.

“There is very little out there to indicate that we’re not just headed back to the bad old days of wolf pelts all over people’s walls,” said Tim Preso of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in Bozeman, Mont.

The Fish and Wildlife Service plans to downgrade the wolf’s classification under the Endangered Species Act from “endangered,” the highest level of protection, to “threatened.” While the animals would still be protected, the reclassification would, among other things, allow ranchers to kill wolves caught attacking their livestock. Currently, they cannot.

The reclassification will apply to all or part of nine Western states – Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and parts of Arizona and New Mexico.

It will also launch the next phase of the agency’s recovery program: delisting, or removing all federal protection. Ed Bangs, who heads the recovery program for the Fish and Wildlife Service, predicted delisting will come sometime in 2004. The federal agency, however, would continue monitoring the wolf for at least five years after that, and could step in if the animals’ numbers dropped dangerously low.

The recovery program began in 1995 with the release of 14 Canadian gray wolves into snowy Yellowstone National Park, which had been without wolves for decades. The animals thrived and spread into other states from there. In terms of numbers, the wolf recovery program has been a howling success. The annual head count on New Year’s Eve found nearly 700 wolves in about 41 packs roaming Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, including 148 of the animals in Yellowstone.

Lone wolves have wandered from those states into Utah, Oregon and Washington, the advance scouts of their species.

The wolves in Yellowstone are under complete federal protection. Once wolves are taken off the federal list, the Yellowstone wolves would be safe as long as they remained inside the park. If they roamed outside, they would be subject to the laws of whatever state they entered.

Cattle and sheep producers, the most ardent opponents of the wolf’s reintroduction, deeply resent the wolves altogether, and many are skeptical that easing the protections will improve the ranchers’ lot.

“My perspective on the whole issue is they’re here and we’ve got to focus on a way to manage them in a way that works for the people of Wyoming,” said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.

A conservation group, Defenders of Wildlife, has been compensating ranchers for confirmed cases in which wolves killed livestock. But ranchers say many kills cannot be confirmed. The group has paid out about a quarter of a million dollars since 1987, almost $50,000 last year alone, but has not decided whether to continue when the wolves are reclassified.

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On the Net:

Endangered species program: http://endangered.fws.gov

Gray wolf information: http://endangered.fws.gov

/A03.html

Yellowstone wolves: http://www.nps.gov/yell

ature/animals/wolf/wolfup.html