Feds to Start Removing Wolf Protections
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By JOHN MILLER  BOISE, Idaho - The head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday his agency will start removing federal protections from gray wolves in Montana and Idaho by January, regardless of whether Wyoming has submitted an acceptable plan to manage its own wolves by then.
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Conservation groups filed suit Wednesday seeking to prevent federal agencies from beginning a program that would poison and shoot black-tailed prairie dogs on federal land in southwestern South Dakota.
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Pressure has grown at federal and state levels to ban public contact with big cats at USDA-licensed facilities.
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Officials in three states have said they will to allow hunting&#8212;which could reduce wolf numbers back to dire levels&#8212;if the creatures lose their protected status.
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By Dennis Lien, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.  Sep. 23--A national animal-protection group has sued the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, contending the agency isn't doing enough to stop the accidental trapping of bald eagles, Canada lynx and gray wolves.
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By Grand Forks Herald, N.D.  Jun. 26--Partners in the project to restore gray wolf populations in Minnesota and neighboring Great Lakes states gathered Monday in the Twin Cities to celebrate the turnover of management from federal hands to states and tribes.
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SALMON, Idaho  - For the first time in nearly a decade, hunters on Saturday begin tracking and killing buffalo on the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where federal wildlife managers plan to cut the herd from 1,200 to 500 over the next five years.
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SALMON, Idaho  - An outspoken opponent of U.S. government efforts to reestablish the gray wolf in western states has pleaded guilty to trying to poison the federally protected species, a U.S. prosecutor said on Friday.
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By Angel Riggs and Michael Overall, Tulsa World, Okla.  Feb. 13--OKLAHOMA CITY -- Aggravated farmers seem ready to put down their guns now that environmentalists have taken steps to protect crops from wild elk, officials said Monday.
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By Idaho Statesman, The Idaho Statesman, Boise  Dec. 19--The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today it will propose delisting Rocky Mountain wolves as endangered in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming by the end of January.
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US symbol removed from list of threatened species.
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A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist says returning wolves to the Rocky Mountains is "a chance to undo a great wrong" done when wolves were exterminated from about 98 percent of their range by the mid-1900s.
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By Grand Forks Herald, N.D.  Feb. 4--North Dakota doesn't have a resident gray wolf population, but the Game and Fish Department is developing an action plan to deal with the species after it's removed from federally protected status in the eastern two-thirds of the state.
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An animal sanctuary is to stop taking in greyhounds after becoming a target for animal rights activists.
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The Bush administration on Tuesday proposed a steep reduction in the miles of rivers and streams to come under federal protection for Pacific salmon, and offered exemptions for property owners and broad areas of the Northwest and California.
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Wyoming and the federal government have reached an agreement on how the state would manage the wolf population after its protection under the Threatened and Endangered Species Act is lifted.
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By H. JOSEF HEBERT  WASHINGTON - Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Friday he has scrapped a proposal that critics said would protect fewer rare plants and animals from extinction.