Bison baiting: A pack of wolves surround a bison. The recovery of the grey wolf has been one of the conservation movements greatest success stories.

Credit: U.S. National Park Service

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WASHINGTON DC: Thirty-five years after being hunted to near extinction, the grey wolf on Monday was taken off the U.S. list of endangered species, clearing the way for it to be hunted again in most states.

"We have recovered a wolf population," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the western state of Montana. "The populations are viable, they are in great shape, they have extreme genetic diversity and so the Endangered Species Act did its job to bring wolves back," Bangs said.

Near elimination

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) comprises dozens of wide-ranging environmental laws passed in the 1970s to protect imperilled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation."

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) was placed on the endangered list in 1974 after the animals were almost eliminated in many U.S. states.

But thanks to conservation efforts its numbers now reach some 4,000 in the Great Lakes region, which includes Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and there are more than 1,300 in the Rocky Mountain states of Idaho and Montana. There are also between 8,000 and 11,000 grey wolves in Alaska.

In all these states wolves can now be hunted again according to strict regulations. "The states will be able to use regulated hunting to manage wolf populations," said Bangs, adding that "the hunting season will occur this fall, people will be able to buy a license to hunt a wolf."

In northwestern Wyoming, where there are still only around 300 animals, the wolf remains a protected species.

Fair chase

In recent years there has been isolated hunting allowed when wolves briefly came off the endangered list in some areas. Bangs said some 265 wolves were killed last year in the northern Rockies "because of cattle problems but the population still grew 8%."

But going forward, Bangs said, "instead of having a person like me getting on a helicopter and shoot a wolf after it killed someone's cow, you'll have a hunter with a license to go out in the fall and hunt a wolf with a fair chase."

And he offered reassurances that conservationists would be keeping an eye on the nation's wolf population over the next five years. "If the states don't do a good job over five years, we put them back on the endangered species list," he vowed.