Court rules Wyoming wolves should be stripped of federal protections

Wolves in Wyoming should be stripped of Endangered Species Act protections and management given to the state rather than the U.S. government, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday, a decision that opens the door for hunting of the animals.

U.S. wildlife managers in 2012 determined that wolves in Wyoming had rebounded from the threat of extinction and that the state plan to oversee the creatures was adequate to ensure their survival

It's about time.  4 years + for this to happen?

I hope WY will regulate them to where our elk numbers come back, but I expect they will be way too conservative for that so as to head off criticism.

There are way too many bears as well.

from what I am seeing around Cody there are absolutely too many deer most hills are bare of grass there must be several hundred in the city proper and thousands with in a few miles on any road out.

I live in NW Montana and we have had control of our wolves for a few years now and there is no reason for them to be on the Endangered list in any state in the northern tier, they have proliferated quite well since re-introduction as well as natural migration.

I am not a wolf hater by any means, but I am a realist and they are doing quite well, a lot of the groups, say natural balance will take over and control predator and prey populations, the only problem is, they don't figure the human populations in those predator prey populations, I have a pack of 13 wolves living within a mile of my house and you have to be prudent with them, they take dogs, cats and other live stock out quite regularly in this area.

Human live stock is much easier to take than wild prey, you had an initial drop in natural prey populations because they had not lived with wolves, now that a few generations of natural prey have grown up, their surviving much better and the natural instinct is to take the easiest prey and that is human livestock and pet animals.

The winter kill is going to be devastating.  I think Game and Fish have their heads in the sand about it.

I'm not so sure about the survival rates.  The elk numbers are way down near the Park where lots of us used to hunt.  They have been forced out into the sagebrush in a big way.

Moose have been especially hard hit.  Very few calves survive.

Is .223 ethical on wolf? Got a precision rig being built that would be dandy if so. Maybe a 68 grain bullet.