Service sets announcement on gray wolves

By JACK SULLIVAN

The Associated Press 3/17/03 10:16 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to announce Tuesday whether it will move ahead with plans to ease federal protection of gray wolves in the mountain West.

The agency has proposed reclassifying wolves in all or portions of nine Western state from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act, a move made possible by a successful program to reintroduce the predator to the region.

Officials in Washington have scheduled an announcement on the wolves' status for Tuesday.

Fish and Wildlife officials have been considering the change since 2000. While threatened species are still protected by the government, the lower status, among other things, could allow ranchers to kill wolves caught attacking their livestock.

That status change would not affect wolves currently listed as "experimental populations." They already can be killed under certain circumstances.

The downlisting also would launch the next phase of the service's plan: delisting, or removing all federal protection, and letting states manage gray wolves like other wild animals.

Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, the three states where most of the wolves live, must have acceptable management plans in place before delisting will occur.

Gray wolves once roamed across North America, but had virtually disappeared from the Rockies by the 1930s and eventually vanished from most of the lower 48 states, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Gray wolves were listed as an endangered species in 1967.

The government reintroduced the animals to the northern Rockies in 1995, when 14 Canadian wolves were released in Yellowstone National Park, which had been without wolves for decades.

The population has since grown dramatically with wolves spreading beyond the park boundaries.

A headcount held last Dec. 31 found almost 700 wolves in more than 40 packs roaming in the park and in the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

Lone wolves, considered the advance "scouts" of their species, also have wandered into Utah, Oregon and Washington. Those states, along with Colorado and portions of Arizona and New Mexico, are included in the Fish and Wildlife Service's proposed downlisting.

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