Wolf decision leaves Obama a land mine

So picture yourself as Interior secretary Ken Salazar this week. The Bush administration has left you an immediate decision on whether to move ahead with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to remove federal endangered species protections from wolves in Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington and northern Utah. Thirteen environmental groups including the powerful Defenders of Wildlife and Natural Resources Defense Council are poised to sue. These mostly Democrats are among the strongest supporters of your new boss Barack Obama. Indeed, they have friends in the transition team and now probably friends in the White House who are getting a lot of calls. The callers are telling you and them to delay or not publish entirely the delisting rule Jan. 27. They want your Fish and Wildlife Service to start all over with a "stakeholder process" that brings ranchers, environmentalists and hunters together in a big new public negotiation aimed at convincing hunters and ranchers they need to support killing fewer wolves. But now among the people calling you and the White House are western Democrats like Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal. Schweitzer is telling you that if delisting is delayed it will empower the radical anti-wolf forces in his state who have said all along the environmentalists - and now the Obama administration - would never allow the states to take over management. He would report that a bill may come to his desk from the Legislature this year, calling on him to tell the federal government to "shove it" on wolves....