The move gives states in the continuous United States the authority to manage their local wolf populations, including by allowing them to be hunted. It will mainly affect wolf populations in the upper Midwest, Colorado and Pacific Northwest because wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains were previously delisted. Wolves have never been federally protected in Alaska.

Department of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who traveled to Minnesota to announce the delisting at a wildlife refuge, said the gray wolf had exceeded all conservation goals and no longer met the legal definitions of a threatened or endangered species.

There are about 6,000 gray wolves in the lower 48 states, up from about 1,000 when they were added to the endangered species list in the 1970s after being hunted, trapped and poisoned to near extinction.

The International Wolf Center in Minneapolis estimates Canada’s population of gray wolves at about 60,000, second only to Russia’s. Worldwide, the gray wolf is considered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to be a “species of least concern.”

The Canadian wolf population is considered stable-to-increasing and it remains a game species in most of Canada, according to the IWC.

Delisting the gray wolf in the U.S. is a win for sportsmen and ranchers in that country who argue larger numbers of wolves have diminished herds of big-game animals such as elk, and also prey on livestock.

“Impacted communities will be able to determine how best to preserve gray wolf populations while protecting other native species and livestock,” Utah Senator Mike Lee said in a statement.

Conservation groups said the species has yet to recover in much of their former range, including northern California and the Northeast, and said the timing of the move appeared to be an effort to win votes for President Donald Trump in Midwestern states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota days before the Nov. 3 election.

“Wolves will be shot and killed because Donald Trump is desperate to gin up his voters in the Midwest,” Brett Hartl, chief political strategist at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, said in a statement.

— Nichola Groom is a Reuters correspondent covering U.S. environmental and energy policy from Los Angeles. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The wolf hunt, running from Oct. 15, 2016 through to March 31, 2017, is to be allowed in wildlife management zones 43 (Melfort, Tisdale), 47 (North Battleford, Turtleford), 48 (Preeceville, Pelly), 49 (Hudson Bay, Porcupine Plain), 50 (Nipawin, Choiceland), 53 (Spiritwood, Shellbrook, Big River), 54 (Blaine Lake, Marcelin), 55 (Meadow Lake, Pierceland) and 68N (Loon Lake).

There is no limit on the number of licenses available, the province said, though the licenses are only available to Saskatchewan residents and are not available online. Licenses must be picked up at environment ministry offices in Meadow Lake, North Battleford, Spiritwood, Prince Albert, Nipawin, Saskatoon, Melfort, Greenwater Lake, Hudson Bay, Preeceville and/or Regina.

For this hunt, wolves are considered a big game species, so all existing big-game regulations for weapon type, clothing requirements and baiting will apply, the province said.

“Livestock predation by wolves is an ongoing problem for producers in areas near the provincial forest,” Environment Minister Scott Moe said in the province’s release.

“Allowing a hunting season in these areas will remove some wolves and cause others to be more wary of moving into open areas where livestock are present.”

A previous wolf hunt ran in two zones from Dec. 15, 2015 to March 31, 2016, following a pilot project in the Weekes area in 2014, when it designated wolves as a big game species for that specific purpose.

The province said at the time it wasn’t planning to create a “general” wolf hunting season, but to focus on “specific areas which meet established criteria.”

A wolf hunt, the province said in 2014, would “only be considered after traditional control methods have failed to reduce livestock losses.”

Hunters who get a licence for this wolf hunt will have to report their results within 14 days of the end of the season, the province said Wednesday. Those who don’t comply with that requirement will be blocked from buying licences until they do. –– AGCanada.com Network

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State biologists fatally shot two members of the so-called Profanity Peak wolf pack from a helicopter on Aug. 5 after confirming five fatal wolf attacks on livestock in that area, just south of the state’s border with British Columbia. Further lethal-control efforts were later called off.

But eradication orders were renewed, and expanded to the entire pack, on Aug. 19 when the state Fish and Wildlife Department determined the same group of wolves was behind additional attacks that left two calves dead and a third injured.

Aerial kill teams have since destroyed four more wolves, including a pup, and wildlife agents are looking for the remaining five members of the targeted pack, said Craig Bartlett, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Department.

“We’ve never taken out an entire pack before,” Bartlett said, adding officials could still decide at some point to suspend the hunt and spare some of the remaining wolves if livestock attacks appear to have been halted.

In the meantime, he said, the number of cattle killed or injured by wolves in the area had grown to 12.

The Profanity Peak wolves make up one of 19 wolf packs known to inhabit Washington, 15 of them in the eastern third of the state where federal Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves were lifted in 2011.

Wolves are still listed as endangered under state law, which allows officials to remove wolves found to be repeatedly preying on livestock. But the population has grown steadily since 2008, when the first pack documented in Washington in many decades was confirmed, and they now number about 90 animals statewide, Bartlett said.

The current effort targeting the Profanity Peak pack marks the third time state officials have used lethal means against wolves. The two previous efforts, in 2012 and 2014, resulted in the deaths of 10 wolves, but some members of those packs ended up being spared, Bartlett said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.

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Wolves were reintroduced to France in the 1990s under an international convention on wildlife conservation in Europe.

There are now an estimated 300 wolves in the country and the number is growing each year. According to France’s Federation nationale ovine (FNO), the national sheep producers’ organization, the number of animals they kill has risen too — by nearly two thirds since 2011 — and is likely to top 8,000 this year.

“We are asking that wolves be removed from sheep breeding regions because they are incompatible with our work,” FNO secretary general Michele Boudoin said.

She stressed that France’s “wolf plan,” which compensates farmers for sheep losses and pays for prevention measures and staff, cost the government nearly 15 million euros (C$21 million) in 2012.

“We don’t want the money, we want to do our job in good conditions,” she said as a flock of brown “Noires de Velay” sheep arrived at the meeting point.

Luc Bourgeois, a young shepherd from southeastern France, said he lost 150 of his 3,000 sheep this year. Ten were killed directly, he said, while the rest jumped in a ravine as they fled.

The farmers want the right to shoot wolves immediately if their flock is attacked, and are calling for a quota of wolf killings, currently set at 24 annually, to be increased or removed altogether.

Members of the FNO and the wider farm union FNSEA were due to meet Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll and the head of the environment minister’s chief of staff later in the day.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris.

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