U.S. AIMS TO END WOLF PROTECTIONS

Traverse City (US), Sept. 3: The Trump administration plans to lift endangered species protections for gray wolves across most of the nation by the end of the year, the director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service said. “We’re working hard to have this done by the end of the year and I’d say it’s very imminent,” Aurelia Skipwith said.

The administration also is pushing ahead with a rollback of protections for migratory birds despite a recent setback in federal court, she said. The Fish and Wildlife Service last year proposed dropping the wolf from the endangered list in the lower 48 states, exempting a small population of Mexican wolves in the Southwest.

It was the latest of numerous attempts to return management authority to the states — moves that courts have repeatedly rejected after opponents filed lawsuits.

Shot, trapped and poisoned to near extinction in the last century, wolves in recent decades rebounded in the western Great Lakes region and portions of the West, the total population exceeding 6,000. They have been removed from the endangered list in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and portions of Oregon, Utah and Washington state. Federal protections remain elsewhere.