Feds delay Ariz. release of wolves

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delaying the release of Mexican gray wolves in the Apache National Forest of Arizona until sometime next year. The federal agency and the Arizona Game and Fish Department had expected to release eight wolves in the next few weeks under a program that began reintroducing the animals into the wild along the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1998. But when it became clear there wasn't unanimous agreement on the release site, "we stepped back to re-evaluate where we were, what we knew, what had been accomplished, what hadn't been accomplished," Tom Buckley, a spokesman for the agency in Albuquerque, said Friday. "It just wasn't the right time for a successful release." Fish and Wildlife Southwest Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle decided this week to postpone the release, Buckley said. The agency has not set a new date except to say it will be in 2011...more