Vogel knew of only one wolf killed in all his time in Nevada. In 1916 or 1917 he saw the skin of one trapped near Little High Rock Canyon in the Black Rock Desert, the book said.

Wolf sightings were more frequent in northeast Nevada, although still rare. One was killed in 1922 at Gold Creek in Elko County and a state trapper caught one near Mountain City in 1923.

In 1941, animal control officers reported that only six wolves had been taken in Nevada in the previous two years — three in Elko County, one near Eureka, one in White Pine County and one north of Reno near the California border.

The closest known population of wolves to Nevada today is more than 100 miles north, in Idaho's Boise and Sawtooth national forests, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Chris Healy, spokesman for the Nevada Division of Wildlife, said the state wants the wolf off the protected list "so if it ever did become established in Nevada, we'd have more management flexibility."

"We've spent an awful lot of time establishing elk in the Jarbidge area and other areas. If they started devastating the elk herd and we didn't have reasonable management options to keep the numbers down, we could lose a precious resource to our agency and to hunters," Healy said.

The Nevada wolves — if there are any — are considered part of a distinct population segment that stretches through the Northern Rockies.

The Fish and Wildlife Service last year sought to delist the gray wolf through that entire range, arguing that the wolf population has recovered enough that federal protection no longer is needed. But conservation groups sued and a judge struck down the decision in January, saying the agency violated proper procedures.

Brown said the agency would try again.

The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife were among the groups that opposed delisting.

"We really don't want to be managing wide-ranging species like wolves on a state-by-state basis," said Bart Semcer, the Sierra Club's Washington, D.C., representative.

"The Endangered Species Act works at a landscape level. That is one of the reasons it has been successful at recovering species like the bald eagle — it doesn't stop at a particular state boundary," he said.

As for the University of Nevada Wolf Pack, the school's Web site says its athletic teams were known as the "Sagebrushers" and then the "Sage Hens" in the late 1890s and 1900s. In 1923, they became the Nevada Wolves and by the late 1920s were the Wolf Pack.

"The Sierra Nevada mountains, located immediately to the west of Reno and prominent on the city's skyline, were and still are the home to numerous wild wolves," the site says.

Perhaps at one time, but not any more.