Secretary Salazar Affirms Decision to Delist Gray Wolves

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar affirmed, March 6, 2009, the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove gray wolves from the list of threatened and endangered species in the western Great Lakes and the northern Rocky Mountain states of Idaho and Montana and parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah.

Wolves will remain a protected species in Wyoming. “The recovery of the gray wolf throughout significant portions of its historic range is one of the great success stories of the Endangered Species Act,” Salazar said. “When it was listed as endangered in 1974, the wolf had almost disappeared from the continental United States.