YOUR AD HERE »

Acting Interior Secretary plans to lift protections for gray wolves across US

This adult gray wolf is part of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, which reintroduced wolves from Canada and northern Montana to the park beginning in 1995. (Courtesy photo)

BILLINGS, Mont. — U.S. wildlife officials plan to lift protections for gray wolves across the Lower 48 states, a move certain to reignite the legal battle over a predator that’s rebounding in some regions and running into conflicts with farmers and ranchers, an official told The Associated Press.

Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was expected to announce the proposal during a Wednesday speech before a wildlife conference in Denver, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Spokesman Gavin Shire said in an interview with the AP.

The decision to lift protections is based on gray wolves successfully recovering from widespread extermination last century, Shire said.

Long despised by farmers and ranchers, wolves were shot, trapped and poisoned out of existence in most of the U.S. by the mid-20th century.

They received endangered species protections in 1975, when there were about 1,000 left, only in northern Minnesota. Now more than 5,000 of the animals live in the contiguous U.S. Most are in the Western Great Lakes and Northern Rockies regions.

Protections for the Northern Rockies population were lifted in 2011 and hundreds are now killed annually by hunters.

Wildlife advocates want federal protections kept in place until wolves repopulate more of their historic range that once stretched across most of North America.

Since being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s, the Northern Rockies population has expanded to parts of Oregon, Washington and California.


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

Readers around Steamboat and Routt County make the Steamboat Pilot & Today’s work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.