A special regulation released Thursday will allow wolves to be shot if they are attacking stock animals or dogs, or if they are having an adverse impact on deer, elk or moose populations.

Conservation groups immediately denounced the move, saying it will let the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming “kill most of the threatened wolves in the Northern Rockies.”

“The Bush administration is giving a blank check to the states to slaughter wolves for doing what they need to do to make a living — which is eating deer and elk,” said Louisa Wilcox with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The government spent millions of dollars to reintroduce wolves to the wild in the Northern Rockies, and now it wants to spend millions more to kill them. That’s crazy.”

But Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that’s not the case.

“Everybody’s crying wolf,” he said on Thursday. “We expect the number killed will be less than we currently kill now for livestock depredations.”

Since 1995, only 60 wolves have been legally killed by private citizens in defense of their private property, or by shoot-on-sight permits as authorized by special rules adopted in 1994 and revised in 2005, according to the FWS. In the past 12 years, two wolves were shot by federal land permittees as wolves chased and harassed horses in corrals or on pickets.

However, between 1987 and 2006, 255 wolves were hunted down and killed in Montana after they had killed livestock. As of December 2007, at least 65 wolves were shot last year alone for livestock depredation.

Since 1987, 101 dogs have been killed by wolves, according to the FWS.

The special regulation is applicable only in the southern half of Montana, most of central Idaho and throughout Wyoming, but not in national parks, Bangs said.

The regulation will be published in the federal register on Monday and is supposed to go into effect Feb. 28 after a 30-day “cooling off” period, but Wilcox said her group plans to file a lawsuit in federal court to block its implementation.

Suzanne Stone, northern Rockies wolf conservation specialist for the group Defenders of Wildlife, called the regulation a “scheme based on backdoor politics” instead of science, and said it goes too far. She also threatened legal action, saying the rule “leaves us no choice but to involve the courts and file a legal challenge to put a stop to this plan.”

“This is a giant step backward,” Stone said. “Under the rule finalized today, more than 750 wolves — over half of the region’s wolf population — could be killed, even though this wolf population is still protected by the Endangered Species Act.”

Bangs isn’t surprised by the talk of court action, since he has expected that to take place once the wolves are taken off of the list of endangered species, which is supposed to happen on or around Feb. 28. That decision will be implemented after 30 days, unless it’s litigated. Once the wolves are delisted, this rule is revoked.

“So it’s likely this will never be used, unless litigation drives the delisting out for years,” Bangs said. “Then this provides a safety valve for states if they need it.”

He added that shooting wolves won’t be allowed if it would contribute to reducing the wolf population in one of the three states below 20 breeding pairs and 200 total wolves.

Wolves were put on the Endangered Species list in 1973 after being hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states.

But with more than 1,500 gray wolves now populating the Northern Rockies and 89 breeding pairs — far exceeding the recovery goal of having 300 wolves and 30 breeding pairs — the FWS considers it to be a recovered species that no longer needs federal protection.

Montana alone is home to about 375 wolves and 40 breeding pairs, well above the minimum population requirements of 10 breeding pairs and 100 wolves. Since 2004, Montana and Idaho have replaced the federal government as the head of wolf management programs in those states, and part of Montana’s plan includes hunting wolves in a manner similar to that of mountain lions or black bears.

Tentative wolf hunting quotas currently are under consideration by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission.

Most of Montana’s wolves are in western Montana and the greater Yellowstone area, but wolves have been reported in the Helena area, including on MacDonald Pass, the Elkhorns and as far east as the Big and Little Belt mountain ranges.

“The states have done an excellent job managing wolves, and this revision will provide the extra flexibility they may need to manage wolves for some time in the future,” said Jay Slack, acting regional director for the FWS mountain-prairie region. “Nonetheless, we will not authorize removal if it brings wolf populations below management population targets.”

Click here to read a copy of the revision.

Reporter Eve Byron: 447-4076 or eve.byron@helenair.com