The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday unveiled its latest plan to end federal protection of wolves in the western Great Lakes and northern Rocky Mountains.
The new rules -- the agency's most recent attempt after a federal judge struck down a similar measure in September -- would take wolves off the endangered species list in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, where they currently roam, and parts of the Dakotas, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, where they might show up in the future.
Wolves will remain federally protected in all other areas of the eastern and southern U.S.
The proposed rules follow rejuvenated wolf populations across the western Great Lakes, growing from a few hundred wolves confined to far Northeastern Minnesota in the 1970s to about 4,000 across the northern stretches of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula today.
"We believe this is a major success story for conservation,'' Lynn Scarlett, deputy Interior secretary, said in a telephone press conference. Restoring wolves across the northern Great Lakes and northern Rocky Mountains "ranks among our greatest collective achievements'' in conservation.
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The agency says it addressed the judge's concerns in the September ruling, citing legal authority that the department claims allow it to differentiate between states where wolves exist, or occasionally visit, from states where there are no wolves.
Scarlett said state wildlife agencies can best oversee long-term management of the species, and the time has come to show the Endangered Species Act can work to return wildlife to safe levels, and back to state management.
But wolf supporters say that several state management plans allow too much trapping, shooting and possible sport hunting of wolves -- activities they say could drive populations down to near-extinction levels. They also say the plan offers little chance of wolves ever recovering in other states.
"This is a lame duck, last gasp effort to strip wolves of protections... and we're going to ask the Obama administration to stop it,'' said Howard Goldman, regional director of the Humane Society of the U.S. in St. Paul. "And if we have to, we'll go back to court.''
In July, a federal judge in Montana ruled that the federal government could not transfer wolf management to Rocky Mountain states because Wyoming's state management plan didn't protect the animal.
The new plan would again remove federal protections in Montana, Idaho and eastern Washington and Oregon but retain federal regulation in Wyoming -- unless and until the state changes its plan to offer more protections for wolves.
The changes will formally take place 30 days after the new plan is printed in the Federal Register later this month.
It's possible, however, that the Obama administration Interior Department could pull back the plan before it becomes official.
