JACKSON - Wyoming's wolf management team no longer exists, save one specialist who will continue to investigate livestock losses to wolves.

The Cowboy State's four-man wolf management team was hired by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department just a few months ago, after wolves in the Northern Rockies were removed from the federal endangered species list.

When the canines regained Endangered Species Act protection in October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took back management of the species.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission decided Monday morning at a public meeting here to reassign all but one of the wolf specialists.

The reassigned employees will no longer be paid out of the state Legislature's general fund. The Game and Fish Commission is now footing the salaries, which will cost the commission about $163,000 for the remainder of the 2009 fiscal year, said Gregg Arthur, Game and Fish deputy directory, who presented the department's recommendations to the commission Monday.

The commission approved the proposal to create two new trophy game "conflict resolution" specialists and one trophy game management position, so the three wolf specialists could be reassigned rather than laid off.

"We were able to recruit and hire excellent employees, and we hired them in good faith," Arthur told the commission.

The commission voted unanimously to approve the new positions.

"I commend the department for this move," said commissioner Bill Williams. "This is the right thing to do."

Commissioner Fred Lindzey agreed.

"We really appreciate them being patient with us," Lindzey said. "We hope they find these other jobs fulfilling."

Lindzey said Wyoming is going to need the wolf team reassembled when the state regains management of the animals, he joked, "25 years from now."

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is still responsible for investigating livestock losses to wolves within the state's wolf trophy game area, in the northwest corner of the state, so the commission retained one of the wolf specialists to perform these investigations.

By state law, the Game and Fish Department must reimburse livestock producers for confirmed losses to wolves inside the trophy game zone, and that hasn't changed with their federal relisting. But state lawmakers could get rid of that provision during the 2009 legislative session.

Mike Jimenez, who was briefly the coordinator of the state's wolf management program, is no longer with the Game and Fish Department, he told the Star-Tribune recently.

Because wolves are once again protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, Jimenez has returned solely to his role with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as the wolf recovery project leader for the state of Wyoming.

Brian Foster, human resources manager for the Game and Fish Department, previously told the Star-Tribune two of the three wolf specialists are earning $3,704 per month, and the third - a longer-term employee who transferred into the position - is making $4,364 monthly.

Jimenez's salary was being paid by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during what was supposed to be a transition to permanent state management of wolves.

Contact environment reporter Chris Merrill at (307) 267-6722 or chris.merrill@trib.com

The Bush administration removed wolves in this part of the country from protection under the Endangered Species Act in March, handing over management to Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

That decision was challenged as soon as legally possible in federal court by a dozen conservation and animal rights organizations.

In July, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Montana sided with the conservation organizations and issued an injunction against the rule, saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to ensure genetic exchange between the three main wolf populations in the three states, and had flip-flopped on Wyoming's "dual status" plan, by first rejecting it and then accepting it, without justification for the change.

That decision in July effectively restored federal endangered species status to wolves until a decision in the larger legal challenge was handed down.

In October, at the request of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the judge "vacated" the delisting rule, essentially making it void.

All three states created trophy game zones for wolves, but Wyoming was the only one to establish a "predator" area for the animals where they could be shot on sight by anybody, without limits.

Wyoming's

predator management area for wolves was one of the items of concern cited by Judge Molloy in his injunction ruling.

The classification of wolves as trophy game in the northwest corner and predators everywhere else is written into state law. Although there has been talk amongst some lawmakers of possibly designating wolves as trophy game animals statewide, such a change could only be done by the state Legislature, which doesn't meet until January.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting public comment on its new proposal to delist wolves through Nov. 28. The agency is considering delisting the animals in Idaho and Montana only, and leaving them designated as endangered in Wyoming.]]->