Plan to delist gray wolves wins praise and criticism

PRAY, Mont. — For rancher Randy Petrich, the removal of gray wolves from the endangered species list — a move that would open up the animals to hunting in the Northern Rockies for the first time in decades — couldn't come soon enough.

On the same land where it was once rare to see the animal, Petrich has seen fresh wolf tracks almost every morning this fall — close enough to threaten his cattle.

"I believe that any wolf on any given night, if there happens to be a calf there, they will kill it," Petrich said. "In reality, to help us now, we need to be trapping them, shooting them — as many as possible."

Just 12 years since the wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park after years of near-extinction, federal officials say the sharp rise in the wolf population in the region justifies removing them from the endangered species list.

Critics, however, say the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is moving too fast and could be setting the stage for a slaughter that would push wolves back to the brink in the Rockies.

For cattle ranchers like Petrich in the Paradise Valley north of Yellowstone, who already have the right to kill predators threatening their stock, the killing of wolves that established new territories outside the park has already begun. Seven times in the last five years, Petrich, a third-generation rancher, has shot a wolf for killing or harassing cattle.

It took $24 million of federal funds and more than two decades to bring wolves back from near-extinction in the northern Rocky Mountains — the result of a government eradication program in the mid-1900s that included widespread poisoning of wolves.

After years of debate, an initial 66 wolves were transplanted into the park from Canada beginning in 1995. Now, an estimated 1,545 roam Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — more than enough, federal official say, to justify removing them from the endangered species list.

"The more of something you have, the less valuable each individual piece becomes," said Ed Bangs, the Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf recovery project leader. "If you have more wolves than you have now, it's really going to start causing a lot of problems."

Environmentalists fighting the plan argue that at least 2,000 to 3,000 wolves are needed in the region to keep them from again disappearing from the American West.