CHEYENNE - A House committee reversed itself Monday and approved a bill that would enable the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to use aerial hunting methods and grant permits for private landowners to kill wolves threatening their property.

The House Travel Committee voted 5-4 during a morning meeting to reject the measure, but legislative leaders asked the committee to reconsider during a lunch recess.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Terry Cleveland presented the bill to the committee that outlined the aggressive wolf management tactics and called for the use of GPS monitoring devices on gray wolves. Travel Committee Chairman Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, sponsored the bill, which would cost the state an estimated $2.4 million.

"It's gonna take a significant amount of time and resources to monitor, to track, and in some cases to do conflict resolution with these wolves," Cleveland said.

Cleveland added that he thought the use of aerial hunting was absolutely necessary to guarantee effective wolf management. "The only tool that we have today to control wolf populations that they didn't have 100 years ago is aircraft," Cleveland said.

Two committee members switched their vote during the noon recess to move the bill to the House floor for discussion.

Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, said he opposed the bill during the morning vote because he thought it was "poorly formulated," but that he switched his vote because "there is an overarching need to have a bill in place so that we can deal with the wolf settlement if one comes."

"If this committee kills the bill, then we extinguish any mechanism to approve a wolf settlement in the House of Representatives, and I don't want to do that," Brown said.

The bill passed within minutes of an announcement that federal officials were removing gray wolves in the Great Lakes region from the endangered species list and seeking to do the same for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies. In Wyoming, the removal is contingent on a state wolf management plan being approved.

"I felt after further consideration that (the bill) probably deserved debate on the floor," Rep. Jim Slater, R-Laramie, said. "This is just a placeholder bill, and if it doesn't come up right, there'll be plenty of debate to kill it."

A dispute between Wyoming and federal officials over wolf management has been stewing for the past few years and has prevented removing wolves from Endangered Species Act protections in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

The federal government in 2004 rejected the state's original wolf plan, and the state has filed a lawsuit, now pending in federal court, over the issue.

In its original plan, Wyoming had proposed allowing state Game and Fish officials to adjust the size of a trophy wolf management area around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Outside that area, the state proposed wolves be classified as predators that could be shot on sight.

Late last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service informally proposed designating a permanent wolf area that would extend from Cody south to Meeteetse, around the western boundary of the Wind River Indian Reservation down to Pinedale, west to the Alpine area and then back north to Yellowstone National Park. The state would manage wolves in that area as trophy game; animals outside would be classified as predators.

At the morning committee meeting, representatives of sportsmen groups said they supported the House bill, but reserved the right to withdraw support if it changes during the legislative process.

"The one thing that the bill is lacking is the ability to protect the wildlife that the sportsmen of this state place a high value on," said Bob Wharf, representative of Wyoming Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife.

Some told the House Committee they opposed the bill and wished the measure went even further.

Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, said he was glad the measure included language that would allow private landowners to kill wolves who were harming their private property.

"But we wish it also allowed language that would permit property owners to kill wolves to protect their livestock wherever its allowed to graze, even if the livestock's owner does not own that property," Magagna said.