2 states ready for first open wolf hunts

BILLINGS, Mont. — Montana and Idaho are moving to host the first open gray wolf hunts in the lower 48 states after the animal's removal from the endangered list across much of the Northern Rockies.

Montana wildlife commissioners voted Wednesday to let hunters throughout the state shoot 75 wolves, or 15 percent of Montana's population, beginning in mid-September

In Idaho, commissioners meet later this month to set their quota. A prior plan called for hunting almost 250 wolves.

Legal challenges to the hunts are certain as environmentalists argue wolves could again be driven toward extinction.

Experts, however, said wiping out wolves would be difficult. And state wildlife managers said the quotas are crucial to keep the fast-breeding predators in check and limit attacks on domestic sheep and calves.

"We're signaling our commitment to being responsible wildlife managers," said Montana's lead wolf biologist, Carolyn Sime.

Without hunting or another means to manage wolves, she added, "you either eliminate all the wolves or you eliminate all the livestock."

Gray wolves once ranged from Alaska to Mexico. Hunting, trapping and government-sponsored poisoning wiped out the species across most of the lower 48 states by the 1930s.

Listed as endangered in 1974, wolves did not return to America's Northern Rockies in significant numbers until the mid-1990s, when 66 Canadian wolves were relocated to Idaho and Wyoming.

Last year, when the region's wolves were briefly pulled from the endangered species list, Wyoming let its residents kill a small number in a designated predator zone before the animals were reinstated to the list.

Government wildlife agents and ranchers protecting livestock killed 264 wolves in the Northern Rockies in 2008, including 21 entire packs, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

There are now an estimated 1,350 of the predators in Montana and Idaho. Three hundred wolves in Wyoming remain under federal protection because of a state law there considered hostile to wolves.