Wyoming, feds agree on plan to delist wolves

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state have reached an agreement that would allow Wyoming to be included in the process of removing wolves in the northern Rockies from protections under the Threatened and Endangered Species Act.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal announced Thursday that his office has submitted a draft wolf management plan to the federal agency. Mitch King, regional director of the FWS in Denver, said the plan appears to be complete.

King said the plan should allow Wyoming to be included with Montana and Idaho in the process of removing federal protections for wolves – possibly by early 2008.

King recently warned that Wyoming risked being left out of the process because the state hadn’t submitted an acceptable management plan.

“I’m elated. I’ve said all along that my preference would be to delist the entire listing population segment at once,” King said.

Thursday’s announcement marks a break in a long stalemate between Wyoming and the federal government over the delisting of wolves, which were reintroduced in the Yellowstone region in the 1990s.

The federal government is requiring Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to have plans in place for managing wolves after the animals are removed from endangered species protections.

The federal agency already has accepted wolf plans submitted by Idaho and Montana. But until now, Fish and Wildlife had not indicated it would accept a plan submitted by Wyoming.

The federal government earlier rejected a Wyoming plan that called for classifying wolves as predators that could be shot on sight in much of the state. Wyoming took the federal government to court over the issue in 2004, and that lawsuit remains pending even while the state enacted a new wolf management law this spring.

While the federal agency has called upon the state in recent months to submit a specific wolf management plan, Freudenthal has said the new law should stand as the clearest statement on how the state intended to manage the animals.

On Thursday, King said his agency integrated elements of the new law with the state’s 2003 wolf management plan to come up with the new management plan he presented to the state.