LANDER - Although the federal government is once again in charge of wolf management in the Northern Rockies, the state of Wyoming will still reimburse ranchers whose livestock are killed by wolves, a state official said Tuesday.

Whether wolves are considered an endangered species, Cowboy State law ensures that stockgrowers in the wolf trophy game zone - in the extreme northwest corner of the state - will be paid for confirmed wolf kills, said Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

"By state law, we will still be providing compensation to ranchers within the trophy game area," Keszler said. "Unless there's a change in state law, that program will continue as planned."

The state Legislature appropriated $2.4 million to manage wolves during the 2009-10 budget period. That includes $540,000 to compensate ranchers for wolf depredation. It's unclear at this point, however, how much the compensation program will actually cost, Keszler said.

A federal judge issued an injunction Friday against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to remove wolves from federal Endangered Species Act protection, which took authority away from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to manage their wolves under state plans.

The ruling effectively put the individual state management plans on hold until a final decision in the wolf delisting case is rendered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will manage wolves as an endangered species in the region until that time, or until the injunction is overturned by appeal.

The distinctions between Wyoming's wolf trophy zone and its wolf predator management area are currently meaningless in terms of wolf management and wolf-related laws, but the boundaries are still part of state law. And the state's wolf management team, which includes a coordinator and three wolf specialists, will continue to function within the confines of state law and manage wolves within the boundary of the trophy game zone, Keszler said.

The Game and Fish Department is working on a cooperative agreement with the federal government to become the agency that implements federal management of wolves inside the trophy game zone, he said, where more than 90 percent of the state's estimated 360 wolves live.

Outside the trophy game zone, in the so-called predator management area for wolves, the Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife will continue compensating ranchers for livestock losses to wolves, as long as stockgrowers make a "reasonable effort" to employ nonlethal means of protecting their animals, said Suzanne Stone, the conservation organization's regional representative.

Since wolves were delisted at the end of March, the Defenders of Wildlife has received a few wolf-loss claims from ranchers in the predator zone and has reimbursed two or three of those claims, Stone said.

Inside the trophy zone, the Game and Fish Department has yet to receive any such claims since delisting, Keszler said.

Ranchers who have lost livestock to wolves or are having trouble with the predators can still call the Game and Fish Department for assistance, Keszler said. Or they can also call the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as they used to before delisting.

Last year, the Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed the deaths of 71 cattle and 20 sheep in Wyoming to wolves. Ranchers and Game and Fish officials often argue that many wolf kills of livestock go unconfirmed every year.

Officials with the Game and Fish Department are still in the middle of discussions with the Game and Fish Commission, Gov. Dave Freudenthal and federal Fish and Wildlife Service personnel, Keszler said, determining how the new cooperative management relationship will actually work.

"We hope to have some more formal processes in place soon," he said.

Environment reporter Chris Merrill can be reached at chris.merrill@trib.com or at (307) 267-6722.

* Last we knew: A federal judge restored endangered species protection for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies on Friday.

* The latest: Wyoming will continue to reimburse ranchers in the state's trophy game zone whose livestock are confirmed to have been killed by wolves.

* What's next: The conservation organization Defenders of Wildlife will continue compensating ranchers in the so-called predator management area for wolves, and if the state were to cease its own compensation program in the trophy game zone, the group would resume reimbursing ranchers there, as well.]]->

"We are very pleased this liberal judge did what he did," Ron Gillett told the Lewiston Tribune. "Now it will be all-out war."

He said restoring federal protection to the wolves will reinvigorate his attempts to put a ballot initiative before Idaho voters. Two previous attempts to put such an initiative before voters failed, the last one falling about 10,000 signatures short of the 45,000 needed by the May 1 deadline.

Gillette blamed the failure on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision last March to remove wolves from the endangered species list following a decade-long restoration effort. The removal led Idaho, Montana and Wyoming to plan public wolf hunts this fall.

But those plans were derailed Friday when U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, Mont., granted a preliminary injunction restoring protections for the wolves.

"We said there would be no delisting," Gillett said. "We said there would be no hunting. It shows we have been right all along. People are going to see for sure how they have been lied to, and the people who didn't support us on the initiative petition last time ought to be knocking our door down. We consider this a blessing that the judge ruled this way."

Officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game have said that if such an initiative gets on the ballot and passes, federal rules protecting wolves would likely overrule any Idaho statutes calling for total wolf eradication.]]->