CHEYENNE - A landmark meeting at the State Capitol Monday may signal a turning point in the state-federal conflict over managing wolves in Wyoming.

Key federal and state officials - including U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall - spent more than an hour hashing out details of a new wolf management plan that could lead to changes in state law and eventually delisting of wolves in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

Todd Willins, deputy assistant secretary of the interior, said the federal government will move ahead with the delisting process in January with the assumption that Wyoming will accept some version of the proposal by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who led the discussions, voiced concern about who will pay for the plan and the inclusion of private land inside an expanded area where wolves would be managed as trophy game animals.

Freudenthal said he is willing to continue talks, but the state still intends to pursue its lawsuit over the federal rejection of Wyoming's wolf management plan.

"This is great progress from where we were," Freudenthal said.

Federal and state officials have been discussing the new proposal in some circles for about six weeks. It includes expanding the area in northwest Wyoming where the state can manage wolves as trophy game, while allowing the state to manage them elsewhere as predators that can be shot on sight.

In July, the Fish and Wildlife Service cited the predator provision in the state wolf management plan as the primary reason for rejecting the document.

Mitch King, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Denver-based Mountain-Prairie Region, said Monday that an expanded trophy game area in Wyoming would make the predator provision palatable to federal biologists.

"Frankly, when they get out of this area on the map, we shoot them anyway," King said.

King acknowledged that the timing of the release of the new plan was designed to coincide with the upcoming state legislative session, which convenes in January.

Indicating a willingness to consider the proposal Monday, lawmakers said legislation to modify Wyoming's wolf management plan could among the chief issues considered in the upcoming session.

"This needs to be one of the major things we work on this year in the Legislature," said Rep. Doug Samuelson, R-Cheyenne, who attended the meeting.

Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, who has known about the new plan for more than a month as chairman of the House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee, is already drafting a bill to change the state wolf management law, legislation he has called conceptual.

Wyoming's wolf management plan is part of state law and must be changed by the Legislature before the state can accept the new plan. The federal government already has approved plans by Idaho and Montana to manage wolves.

Freudenthal offered a bit of guidance to lawmakers Monday, suggesting that any new legislation require a return to the original law if the federal government backs out of the deal.

"I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us a time or two," Freudenthal said.

Paying for it

The new plan gives the Wyoming Game and Fish Department control over management of wolves outside Yellowstone National Park and requires the state to maintain at least seven packs outside Yellowstone.

If the plans is approved, Game and Fish Director Terry Cleveland said, his department would combine management of wolves and grizzly bears, at a cost of about $2 million a year.

The startup costs would drive the figure to $2.4 million the first year. About $300,000 would be used to compensate for lost livestock. Another $500,000 might be needed for putting tracking collars on the animals, Childers said.

Freudenthal asked if there was a way to raise the profile of the funding in Washington, D.C. Federal officials said they were resistant to make funding a provision of the delisting notice in the Federal Register.

King said it would largely be up to Congress and regional legislative delegates to push for the money. However, he said it's important to help Washington, D.C., politicians know that Wyoming, Montana and Idaho carry the national burden for the existence of gray wolves in the West, and that the states should be supported financially.

Enzi said the loss of Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee creates a new funding obstacle.

Eliminating packs

The proposed management plan would allow the state to reduce the number of wolf packs outside Yellowstone from the current 23, which could mean elimination of as many as 16 packs.

Among the tools that might be employed to aggressively manage the wolf population are hunting, trapping, harvest by Game and Fish and lethal take permits for landowners, Cleveland said.

If the Legislature caps the number of wolf packs at the minimum allowed by law - seven - Game and Fish would probably be forced to use aircraft snipers to reduce the numbers initially. Cleveland said he anticipates considerable public outcry if that is the case.

Reduced numbers of wolves will benefit the state's elk herds and issues at elk feedgrounds, Cleveland said.

"Other than that, it's going to be a pure headache for me," he said.

Rep. Colin Simpson, R-Cody, asked if the Fish and Wildlife Service would be willing to do the initial paring down of wolf packs. King said it likely would not, largely because federal lawsuits and East Coast constituents would make it extremely difficult in political terms.

Reactions

The expanded trophy game area extends as far west as Cody and Meeteetse and as far south as Pinedale and Alpine. About 25 percent of the area is national park land. Roughly 8 percent is private land.

Freudenthal said he is interested in ways to reduce the amount of private land inside the area.

Simpson said one wolf pack has taken up residence only a mile from his family ranch, where children are sometimes present. Wolves have been known to roam even closer to children on private ranchland in other parts of northwest Wyoming.

Wyoming Stock Growers Association spokesman Jim Magagna said last week that ranchers run about 10,000 head of cattle and 4,000 head of sheep on private and U.S. Forest Service land inside the proposed trophy game area. His group opposes the compromise plan, although he said in a telephone interview Monday that he had not been briefed on the afternoon developments.

Enzi said he was happy about Monday's meeting.

"I'm just really pleased that folks are here talking about this prior to the legislative session," he said. "We've talked about his several times before, and it's been either in the last couple of days of the session or just after it was over, and then it's a whole year away from finding a solution."

Abigail Dillen, a lawyer with Bozeman, Mont.-based Earthjustice that intervened on the side of the federal government in an earlier lawsuit with the state, said she has concerns that wolf advocates have not been part of the latest conversation about wolves.

She said it's critical that proposal assure that sound science is used to establish the trophy game area, though she has not been privy to details of the new plan.

"What matters to people who care about keeping wolves around is whether this plan is biologically sound. That's the question," Dillen said. "It's about whether wolves will be protected adequately. If they are, it's a real step forward."

Wolves were reintroduced in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana a decade ago and are currently managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Their numbers have reached 1,200 in the three-state area, far more than intended under the federal endangered species program.

Reach capital bureau reporter Jared Miller at (307) 632-1244 or at jared.miller@casperstartribune.net.