The ruling effectively maintained endangered species status for wolves moving into states such as Oregon and Colorado from Idaho and Montana, so that states could not authorize ranchers to shoot wolves that attacked their livestock. By downgrading those migrating wolves to threatened species status, the Bush administration plan would have allowed ranchers to kill wolves attacking livestock.

Virtually wiped out in the lower 48 states to control attacks on livestock, wolves were reduced by the 1970s to a small population in northern Minnesota. In the 1980s, a small number migrated naturally into northwest Montana from Canada.

Gray wolves were reintroduced in and around Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996, and wilderness areas of Idaho in 1995. Federal wildlife officials have declared their recovery a success. Officials estimate there are now 825 or more wolves in the western population in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. About 3,200 wolves are estimated to be in the eastern population in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

A small number of Mexican wolves were reintroduced in the Southwest in 1998.

Jay Bodner, natural resources coordinator for the Montana Stockgrowers Association in Helena, Mont., said the ranchers look forward to a workable plan that would would allow for better control of wolves that attack livestock.

"We have not had success in delisting species when they met recovery goals," he said. "So we need to look at other ways to get that accomplished."

The governors of Idaho and Montana have suggested that federal protections for wolves be determined by state boundaries. Their plan would allow for delisting wolves in Idaho and Montana, which have come up with their own wolf management plans, but not in Wyoming, which has not produced a plan acceptable to the Fish and Wildlife Service.