More questions follow Wyoming wolf deal

Last week’s announcement of an agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of Wyoming to remove the state’s roughly 340 wolves from the endangered species list was a landmark step in resolving a yearslong fight. But, as all sides have made clear, there’s still a long way to go — and a lot of hurdles to cross — before the deal goes into effect. The agreement, announced by Gov. Matt Mead and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, now has to be approved by Fish and Wildlife, as well as state legislators and wildlife officials. And it’s hard to predict whether all of that will happen, several wildlife and legal scholars say, because Wyoming’s now entering uncharted territory. “Everything about it is unusual,” said John Nagle, an environmental law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “The fact that you have such ongoing involvement between the state, the federal agencies, Congress and the courts — there aren’t many times, certainly in wildlife management, when all four are so actively involved, one responding to the other.”...more