Seven hearings on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) proposal to delist the Northern Rocky Mountain population (NRM) of gray wolves have concluded, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. All opportunity for public comments ended May 9.

The proposal calls for wolves to be removed from protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) throughout the northern Rockies except for northwestern Wyoming. Wyoming has yet to establish a suitable (to the Service) regulatory framework for wolf management. Idaho and Montana have established frameworks and will be responsible for wolf management once delisting has occurred. Until Wyoming completes this process, wolves in northwestern Wyoming will remain under federal protection.

The proposal has drawn heated debate from proponent and opponents of delisting, which is warranted, according to the Service, because the NRM has exceeded criteria established for a viable and recovered wolf population. According to the 2006 Interagency Annual Report, the northern Rockies now has at least 1,300 wolves residing in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The population has averaged about 26 percent growth each year for the past decade.

At the end of 2006, there were an estimated 673 wolves in Idaho, 311 in Wyoming and 316 in Montana, including an estimated total of 173 packs (groups of two or more wolves) with 86 packs meeting the definition of "breeding pair" (an adult male and female raising two or more pups).

The total number of wolves and breeding pairs is important to the issue of removing the NRM from the endangered species list. Biological recovery criteria calls for at least 30 or more breeding pairs composed of at least 300 wolves well distributed across the three states. 2006 was the seventh year that these criteria were met. At the end of the year there were no documented wolves or wolf packs in other states adjacent to Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

This wolf population has a long and checkered past. It was essentially extirpated by the 1930s and first received legal protection with the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Wolves began to recolonize northwestern Montana in the early 1980s and, in 1995 and 1996, 66 wolves from southwestern Canada were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.

In 2003, wolves in northwestern Montana were reclassified from endangered to threatened. In 2005, U.S. District Courts in Oregon and Vermont concluded that the 2003 rule was "arbitrary and capricious" and violated the ESA. This court ruling invalidated the 2003 changes to the ESA listing. Since then, the NRM, outside of areas designated as nonessential experimental populations, has been classified as endangered under ESA.

Wolves are especially controversial because of their food choices. They subsist largely on elk, white-tailed deer, mule deer, moose and bison. The interagency report indicated that livestock depredations in 2006 included 184 cattle, 247 sheep, 8 dogs, 1 horse, and 2 llamas. Reportedly 43 of the packs were involved in confirmed livestock depredations. Some hunting groups are concerned that wolves are having a detrimental effect on deer and elk populations. In response to the livestock losses, 142 wolves were lethally removed in 2006 but no packs were relocated.

Once public hearing comments on the proposal are reviewed, the Service will make its final ruling on the proposal. For more information, the annual report can be read at http://westerngraywolf.fws.gov/annualreports.htm.