Last week's Question of the Week asked readers whether they agree with the U.S. Department of Interior's decision to take wolves in Montana off the list of endangered species. A majority agreed.

Among 969 responses to this unscientific poll, 610 approved of the decision, while 359 did not.

Some readers' comments:

- I agree with the decision to remove the wolves from the endangered list. The experts are the ones who know how many should be in Montana. Let them do their job. Too many wolves will be very bad for Montana. A large part of our economy is based on ranching and hunting. A huge population of wolves could destroy both. The quota set is plenty high for the number of wolves.

- Reintroduction of wolves to the greater Yellowstone area has been one of the government's biggest success stories and has cost millions of dollars. Risking this success is unnecessary and a huge setback to years of hard work restoring them to their natural habitat.

- Exactly how many wolves should be in Montana seems like an awfully subjective question to me. But if the number of livestock lost to ranchers starts getting out of hand and the number of deer and elk available to sportsmen takes a sharp decline, we'll know we've erred on the side of too many.

- No. After struggling for years to bring wolves back from the brink of extinction, not only do the "powers that be" want to delist the wolf, but start hunting them, too! Talk about going from the fire to the frying pan. It might be one thing to think about delisting wolves, if indeed, they have made a comeback into the wild, but if we start hunting them, too, we'll be adding them back to the endangered species list before too long.