Home On Its Range: The Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf remains at risk. Alan and Sandy Carey/Photodisc/Getty Images

One morning in September, rifle-bearing hunters set out across the Idaho wilderness in pursuit of prey. Their target was the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf, an animal striving to make a comeback throughout Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming as well as parts of Oregon, Washington, and Utah. Weeks later, the same scene played out in Montana at the start of its wolf hunting season. For conservationists, these scenes brought back bad memories: in the 1920s and 1930s, wolves, considered a nuisance, were nearly eliminated from the region by hunting, trapping, and other methods.

In April 2009 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the animals from the federal endangered species list, thus leaving their fate in the hands of state governments. More than 300 wolves in Idaho and Montana -- nearly one-quarter of the total population in those two states -- became fair game. In response, NRDC and a dozen other conservation groups sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in federal court in Montana to relist the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf. As part of that suit, the groups also filed a motion to stop the hunts, but the motion was denied.

"These hunts are happening on top of already excessive wolf mortality," says NRDC senior wildlife advocate Louisa Willcox. Between the hunts and the lethal measures that ranchers and federal and state agencies use to protect livestock, Idaho and Montana wolf populations are facing an especially perilous year, she says.

But there may be a silver lining. In his September decision to allow the hunts, U. S. District Judge Donald Molloy noted that NRDC was likely to prevail in its pending suit against the Fish and Wildlife Service. Delisting the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf in Idaho and Montana but not Wyoming was, he said, a "practical determination that does not seem to be scientifically based" and appears to violate the Endangered Species Act. A final ruling is expected in 2010.

NRDC wildlife advocates believe a legal victory would give momentum to a more significant long-term goal: a scientifically sound recovery plan for the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population. One key is to ensure that the region's wolves remain geographically linked to promote genetic connectivity among the animals. A large, intermingling wolf population is more resilient than several small, isolated groups, explains Andrew Wetzler, director of NRDC's Wildlife Conservation Project. "Each subgroup sends individuals back and forth, and they reinforce each other," he says. "This protects any one population from some sort of calamitous event," such as a disease epidemic.

In the past, management policies for Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves have been shaped without sufficient regard for ecological principles. "The Endangered Species Act is supposed to be about good science, not politics," Willcox says. She and other experts think the recovery target for the region -- a mere 300 gray wolves -- set by the Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1980s is far below sustainable levels. While the current Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf population sits at about 1,650, at least 2,000 wolves are needed to establish a stable, self-sustaining population, according to Sylvia Fallon, a geneticist and evolutionary biologist at NRDC. Besides promoting genetic connectivity, bolstering the region's wolf numbers would help protect grasslands and stream banks. These habitats are important to birds and small mammals but are often overgrazed by deer and elk. With wolves present, those herds tend to be more dispersed and cause less damage.

Ultimately, what's needed is a national recovery strategy, say NRDC wolf experts. The Fish and Wildlife Service has set widely divergent recovery targets for specific groups of wolves in the Midwest, the Northern Rockies, and the Southwest, instead of approaching the conservation of gray wolves in a more coordinated way for the species as a whole.

Until that happens, Willcox and her team continue to support several regional initiatives to promote nonlethal strategies for managing livestock in wolf country.

"Some areas of the Northern Rocky Mountain ecosystem still contain all the species that were here when Europeans first set foot in the West," says Willcox. "Given all the development, asphalt, and sprawl across the country, it's a tremendous success to have an intact landscape still large enough to function as it did hundreds of years ago." Through their efforts to protect the region's wolves, Willcox and her team intend to keep it that way.