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Cheyenne, Wyo. • The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a plan Tuesday to remove wolves in Wyoming from federal protection and allow them to be shot on sight in most of the state.
The draft plan posted online and set for publication in the Federal Register on Wednesday opens the way for Wyoming's wolves to be removed from the endangered list perhaps next summer and no later than a year from now.
The proposal follows a delisting framework that Fish and Wildlife and Wyoming officials agreed to last summer after months of negotiations.
"We've obviously put a little bit more meat on the bone from the principle of the agreement," said Michael Thabault, assistant regional director for ecological services for the Fish and Wildlife Service Mountain Prairie Region. "But substantively it's the same."
New details spell out plans for genetic testing of wolves and how the state would permit the killing of wolves that have killed livestock, he said.
Wolves have been controversial in Wyoming since their reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s. They have proliferated: About 300 wolves live in Wyoming and some 1,600 across the region now.
Wyoming's proposal to classify wolves as trophy game subject to regulated hunting in northwest Wyoming — and as predators that could be killed on sight elsewhere — hung up delisting in the state while Montana and Idaho inched toward taking over management of their populations.
Wolves were delisted in Idaho and Montana earlier this year.
Gov. Matt Mead said the document is an "important step" and shows that Fish and Wildlife is following through on its commitment to turn wolf management over to Wyoming.
"I look forward to working with the Wyoming Legislature to keep us moving towards having control of a species that has such a significant impact on the state," Mead said in a release.
The Wyoming Legislature would need to approve the plan first. The full Legislature is scheduled to meet in February.
The plan also will go through a 100-day public comment period starting this week and ongoing scientific peer review. Delisting is unlikely before this summer, Thabault said, but will occur no later than a year from now.
Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, said the plan's release showed the federal government is moving "expeditiously" on Wyoming wolves. An environmental group criticized the plan, saying the predator status outside Yellowstone would impede wolf migration to the south.
"From our perspective it's once again an example of the Fish and Wildlife Service stepping away from larger recovery of wolves in the West," said Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity. "This is going to make it incredibly difficult for wolves to get to extensive habitat in Colorado and make a comeback there as well."