Obama's team upholds Bush decision to keep grey wolves off endangered list

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Friday the Obama administration will let stand a last-minute Bush administration decision that would remove the gray wolf from the list of threatened and endangered species.

The wolf will no longer be protected in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Utah, as well as in parts of Washington state. It will remain a protected species in Wyoming, though.

At a press conference Friday, Salazar called the wolf's recovery "one of the great success stories of the Endangered Species Act." First included on the protected list in 1974, there are now more than 5,500 gray wolves in the U.S.

Environmental groups reacted to the decision with disappointment.

"We are outraged and disappointed that Sec. Salazar has chosen to push the same, terrible Bush administration plan for wolf delisting just six weeks into President Obama's administration," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "We all expected more from the Obama administration, but Defenders of Wildlife will now move to sue Sec. Salazar as quickly as possible."

"Delisting the wolf at this point completely undermines the serious work, consideration and cooperation among all stakeholders that is necessary before being able to seriously declare the gray wolf recovered," added Suzanne Stone, the group's northern Rockies representative.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which determines which animals to protect under the Endangered Species Act, announced in January that the wolf would be removed after a 34-year stay on the protected list.

The Obama administration announced plans to review that decision along with other last-minute rules issued by the Bush administration, later determining it was the correct call. Monitoring programs in place in the Northern Rocky Mountains and the Western Great Lakes have exceeded recent goals, the department said.