US Loses Ruling On Grey Wolves

A federal judge has struck down a Bush administration rule that lowered Endangered Species Act protection for wolves that are migrating out of strongholds in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes into neighbouring states. In a ruling released yesterday, US District Judge Robert Jones in Portland rescinded the April 2003 decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service which had divided wolf range into three areas and had reclassified the Eastern and Western populations as threatened instead of endangered. The agency had left wolves in the Southwest in the endangered category