gray wolves

With more than 4,000 gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, the federal government said the wolf could be removed from the Endangered Species List.

After devoting four decades and tens of millions of dollars to saving the gray wolf, the federal government wants to get out of the wolf-protection business, leaving it to individual states - and the wolves themselves - to determine the future of the legendary predator.

With more than 150 gray wolves shot in the Northern Rockies so far this fall, a panel of federal judges on Tuesday is scheduled to consider an emergency halt to public hunts for the animals.

Environmentalists went to federal court on Tuesday seeking to restore endangered species safeguards for some 1,200 gray wolves in Montana and Idaho removed from protection by an unprecedented act of Congress.

Ranchers in Western states said they're hopeful the removal of gray wolves from the federal endangered species list will make it easier to hunt the predators and stem losses of cattle and sheep.

A member of Congress is proposing legislation to remove federal protections of gray wolves across the lower 48 states.

The Obama administration on Wednesday announced it is lifting endangered species act protections for 5,500 gray wolves in eight states in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes.

The White House is poised to accept a budget bill that includes an unprecedented end-run around Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in five Western states - the first time Congress has targeted a species protected under the 37-year-old law.

A rider in the federal budget bill that takes gray wolves off the endangered species list across most of the Northern Rockies would keep protections intact in Wyoming, at least for now.

The head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the agency will resume negotiations with Wyoming aimed at turning over control of endangered gray wolves to the state.