PREDATORS -- Environmental groups have dropped a legal fight to keep state wildlife officials from killing two wolves in northeastern Oregon, according to a report on Northwest Public Radio. The wolves are blamed for recent livestock deaths in that area.

When wildlife managers first announced they would go after two wolves in the Imnaha Pack, four conservation groups went to court. But the NWPR story points out that at that point gray wolves were still on the federal endangered species list.

Things are different now, the story explains.

Meanwhile, Oregon wildlife biologists trapped and killed a gray wolf early Tuesday on an eastern Oregon ranch near Joseph, where wolves had killed livestock last month.

The young uncollared male wolf was part of the Imnaha pack, which has killed at least four domestic animals so far this year on private grazing land near Wallowa Lake, the Oregonian reports. Numbering about 14 now, the pack killed domestic livestock in the same area in May 2010