nationwide, while adjusting the habitat size for what’s considered viable for wolf recovery, and give the ongoing management of wolf populations over to states. The Service will focus instead on protecting the Mexican wolf, an endangered subspecies the Service has determined is the only remaining population that needs the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

Gray wolves are considered to have successfully recovered in the western Great Lakes states and the Northern Rockies after three decades of management to restore the species there.

Given anthropogenic changes to the countryside outside those areas, they may struggle to regain homes in other places that were historically their habitat.

In the northern Rocky Mountain states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and eastern Oregon and Washington, wolves have already been delisted as recovered. Their population asof the end of 2012 was estimated at 1,674. The western Great Lakes region in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan reported a population of 3,686 at the end of 2012, and wolves were delisted there in 2012.

Environmental groups call the move to nationally delist wolves premature, and claim that stripping protections from wolves, one of a handful of species to ever be removed from the Endangered Species List, will hinder their recovery.

They point to states such as Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Wisconsin and Minnesota where delisting wolves has been shortly followed by wolf hunting seasons that have taken more than 1,100 wolves and reduced the population by 7 percent as a sign of the treatment wolves would find in other states, should they attempt to regain territory in more of