Six years after they were returned to the world's first national park, the gray wolves of Yellowstone are pushing beyond its borders into an edgy, life-and-death coexistence with the populated West. Multiplying faster than wildlife biologists expected, the wild predators are a marquee success story for wilderness ecology, park tourism and the federal Endangered Species Act. In Yellowstone and central Idaho, about 350 wolves now hunt their traditional prey, weaker elk, deer and moose.


A wolf released in Yellowstone National Park in 1996

But increased run-ins with domestic livestock outside the park and near human settlements have forced managers of the restoration program to kill or remove scores of wolves. Farm and ranch groups, who lost a court fight to keep wolves from being brought back, want the government to lift restrictions on stockgrowers' shooting the animals to protect their cattle, sheep and dogs. With the inauguration nearing, some wolf defenders worry that the new administration will weaken a program that has allowed the species to regain a foothold in the wild.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who helped carry the first 14 transplanted Canadian wolves into Yellowstone in 1995, returned to the park Saturday for a final briefing before leaving his post next weekend. It was the first anniversary of a court ruling that upheld the species' controversial return. The 31 wolves released in Yellowstone in 1995-96 have grown to 164 animals in 16 packs. Another 34 let loose in the central Idaho wilderness have expanded to 185 wolves.

Babbitt won't speculate about whether his Republican successors will try to undo the gains for wolves. But he said Saturday that livestock "will not have priority" over wolves on public lands in the West.

Bob Ferris, vice president at Defenders of Wildlife, which has paid more than $155,000 to ranchers for livestock killed by wolves, expresses "tremendous fears" about changes under President Bush. "We're gearing up to do whatever it takes to preserve this effort." Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, dismisses the worries. "This program has received about zero political intervention," says Bangs, who joined the project during the Reagan administration.

Richard Krause, assistant counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says stockgrowers will press anew for authority to shoot wolves that threaten herds, rather than have to wait for government agents to investigate, verify and then track down the culprits. Krause says that Gale Norton, whom Bush has nominated as Babbitt's successor, "is not as politicized as people on the other side think."

In a society reared on Old World tales of wolves as bloodthirsty killers, the gray wolf was hunted to extinction across the West by the 1930s. Since 1974, when the species was listed as "endangered," it has rebounded in the Great Lakes. Canadian wolves also have begun to re-colonize parts of northwest Montana.

But eight of Yellowstone's wolf packs now spend most or all of their time beyond the park boundaries. The Sheep Mountain pack was reduced from 13 wolves to one by legal shootings and live removals after it repeatedly attacked livestock last year in Paradise Valley, Mont., north of the park.

Since the 1980s, authorities have had to shoot 82 wolves and relocate 91 others in the northern Rockies for killing livestock. Last year, Yellowstone wolves killed seven cattle, 31 sheep and five dogs, while central Idaho packs killed 15 cattle, 55 sheep and three dogs.

Three young Sheep Mountain males, trained in captivity to avoid livestock, are now back in the wild. The acid test might come this summer, when ranchers move cattle back to Paradise Valley pastures.

Wolves killing livestock "is just inevitable," local rancher Martin Davis says. He says having wolves in the park "for show-and-tell" is fine, "but if they come out, we can't have our hands tied.''

Some people already have killed some wolves illegally, hewing to an anti-wolf philosophy known as "shoot, shovel, and shut up." Reliable counts are elusive. A tally as of 1998 found 21 illegal shootings of radio-collared wolves. Fish and Wildlife just posted a $10,000 bounty last month for the killers of two more in Idaho.

Despite the turmoil, the northern Rockies packs have reached Fish and Wildlife's goal for down-listing the species to "threatened": 20 pairs of mates producing successful litters for at least two of three consecutive years. Last July, the agency proposed reclassification.

Wolf advocates say they worry that such moves are hasty.

Defenders of Wildlife and the Turner Endangered Species Fund are pushing for wolf reintroductions in Colorado's southern Rockies . Last month, Defenders of Wildlife established a "proactive" fund for attack prevention: herd-guarding dogs, electric sheep fences, noise-making devices to scare wolves and perhaps even adding extra cowboys.