Gray wolves removed from endangered list
After 33 years of federal protection, the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan were removed today from the federal endangered species list, a milestone in the animals' dramatic recovery across the Upper Midwest.

By Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune


After 33 years of federal protection, the gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan were removed today from the federal endangered species list, a milestone in the animals' dramatic recovery across the Upper Midwest.
Federal officials had been moving toward what is called "de-listing" gray wolves since early in this decade, when they first proposed doing so.

Wolves for decades had been listed as "threatened" in Minnesota and as "endangered" in all other states except Alaska. In 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified all wolves in the eastern half of the United States as "threatened" because their populations had recovered sufficiently in the western Great Lakes area.

In 2004, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove gray wolves in the eastern United States from the threatened list, allowing states and tribes with wolf populations on their lands to manage the wolves. A federal judge, in effect, threw out that plan, shrinking the proposed de-listing states to the three in the Upper Midwest.

Last March, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton took the penultimate step, declaring that the three-state region's wolves had sufficiently recovered from the threat of extinction to be removed from the list.

Wolf-recovery efforts "ensure the wolf is an enduring part of the landscape of the Upper Midwest," she said at the time.

Land of 3,000 wolves

For centuries, wolves in most of the lower 48 states were ferociously hunted and trapped even as their natural habitat shrank, plunging them toward extinction.

Roughly 4,000 of the animals live in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. By far the largest concentration is in Minnesota, where about 3,020 live in about 485 packs averaging between five and six wolves each. Their range is in central and northeastern Minnesota.

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Let the law suits begin!

Best news since the last one was killed!

looks like another success story!

And, of course, everywhere, the deer herds were devastated as the wolves spread like a plague and hunting was curtailed forever - NOT!!!!

Yet another good example of how wolves do not mean the end of hunting.

Brent

Thanks for the valuable info brent. You guys have a shitload of wolves in IOWA. Idiots Out Walking Around. That ain't no shit.

quote:

Originally posted by sledder:
Thanks for the valuable info brent. You guys have a shitload of wolves in IOWA. Idiots Out Walking Around. That ain't no shit.

So if you're not from New York-- I guess this whole "war on terror thing" is crap-- only New Yorkers can comment or have an interest....

So if you're not Jewish-- you must not be qualified to condemn Hitler....

So if you're not from a community along our border with Mexico-- I guess illegal immigration is something else you can't comment on....

You FUNNY!

IV

There not just in the U.P. in Michigan! I saw a blob on the side of the road in Cheboygan county in the northern lower in December. I thought it may have been a bear that had been hit so we stoped to see it. That was no bear it was a jet black WOLF. I said somthing to the in-laws about it and they said, "We love seeing them up here". It's no wonder why the Deer pop. is down, Damn Coyotes & now the Wolf.
Doug