Gray Wolf May Lose Endangered Status

Saying they have succeeded in pulling America’s gray wolf population back from the brink of extinction, federal wildlife officials on Tuesday proposed dropping some protections for the sleek predator.

Since the gray wolf was listed as endangered in much of the United States in 1974, its numbers have climbed from a few hundred in Minnesota to between 3,000 and 4,000 animals scattered across the West and the Great Lakes region.

“This is truly an endangered species success story,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The wildlife service said it wants to reclassify the gray wolf from endangered to threatened in some parts of the country and take it off the list entirely in areas where it is not found--including California and Nevada.

Conservation groups were mixed in their reactions. They welcomed news of the population rebound but argued that the wildlife service needs to do more to promote the wolf’s return across the West and in northern New England.

“I think the service is being too cautious. We can accomplish more,” said Tom France, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation.

Environmental groups were particularly critical of the proposal to delist the gray wolf entirely in all or portions of 30 states, where the wildlife service thinks it is unlikely the animals will turn up in significant numbers.

“This plan takes all protection away from wolves if they cross the border [into those regions] and I defy the service to provide a biologically viable reason,” said Bob Ferris, vice president for species conservation at Defenders of Wildlife.

Federal officials responded that there is nothing to stop individual states from launching their own recovery programs. Moreover, they said, the goal of the Endangered Species Act is not to return animals to their historical range, but to rescue them from the edge of extinction.

“Are wolves everywhere they could be? No,” said Ed Bangs, western wolf recovery coordinator for the wildlife service. “The question is, are they any longer endangered and threatened? And the answer is quickly becoming no.”

That, wildlife officials say, is a result of the federal protections of the last 25 years and plentiful prey, including an exploding deer population.

Gray wolves once roamed much of North America. Ferris estimated that there were about 200,000 in the country before the Civil War. Relentlessly hunted and poisoned over the next century as livestock predators, they had all but disappeared by the 1930s.

While hated and feared by ranchers and farmers, wolves have been revered by others as an icon of the wild. Their recovery has been controversial and celebrated.

Bangs said about 450 gray wolves live in the northern Rockies, including a much-chronicled group reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995. Most of the rest live in the wilds of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

The Fish and Wildlife Service proposal will be subject to public comment and is expected to take effect in a year.

Minnesota wolves are now listed as threatened. The rest in the nation have been classified as endangered, which makes it unlawful to kill, harm or harass them.

The new rules would reclassify the wolves as threatened, a change that would retain protections but allow private landowners to kill wolves attacking domestic livestock.

There are fewer than two dozen Mexican gray wolves living in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, and they would remain on the endangered list, as would the small population of red wolves found in the Southeast.