SEATTLE — Wolves are finally poised to be taken off the Endangered Species list in the Northern Rockies, with the federal government recently approving Wyoming’s plan for managing its own wolves.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday that the wolf population in Wyoming is officially “recovered,” the same pronouncement that’s been made about wolf populations in Idaho and Montana. That decision — when it takes effect at the end of September — marks the end of a wolf-recovery process that began in the region nearly 17 years ago.
But the fate of the once nearly extinct predator is far from settled. Wolf advocates fear that the animals could be beaten back out of the Northern Rockies by state laws that have gradually expanded the hunting and trapping of wolves nearly everywhere except in national parks.
New lawsuits are expected to be filed soon in Montana, where conservationists argue that newly authorized wolf traps could catch threatened Canada lynx. Legal…
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