Federal protections for some 1,200 gray wolves in Montana and Idaho officially end on Thursday under unprecedented legislation passed by Congress last month removing them from the endangered species list. The effective date of the de-listing, which places the wolves under state wildlife control and opens them to licensed hunting, was announced on Wednesday by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in a conference call with reporters. Another 4,000 wolves in the western Great Lakes region could lose their status as threatened or endangered early next year under a separate government proposal issued last month. Wolves were once hunted, trapped and poisoned to the edge of extinction. But their recovery in the Midwest and Northern Rockies has brought them into conflict with ranchers, farmers and sportsmen who see the animal as a growing threat to livestock and big-game animals, such as elk and deer.
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Wolves to lose federal protection today
