House committee recommends wolf bill

The Casper Star-Tribune reports:

A legislative committee moved forward a bill Wednesday that would retain tight state control over gray wolves in Wyoming if the federal government removes the animals from the endangered species list. On Wednesday, the state House Committee on Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources recommended House Bill 32 and killed four other wolf bills. The defeated proposals included addressing most federal concerns about the state's wolf management plan and revoking the state's earlier concessions to federal concerns. House Bill 32 would emphasize protecting livestock and wild ungulates from wolves and would continue to classify wolves as predators in most of the state. The bill also authorizes the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission to work in cooperation with Idaho and Montana to move wolves as necessary to assure genetic interchange among the states' wolf populations. The bill would bind Wyoming to maintaining at least seven breeding pairs of wolves outside of National Park Service lands in northwestern Wyoming, where the previously extirpated species was reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1994. Or, if Wyoming entered into a management agreement with the Park Service, the bill would call for maintaining 15 breeding pairs on Park Service and state lands within Wyoming...