Oregon Public Broadcasting

One of the first acts of the Obama administration will keep the rocky Mountain gray Wolf on the Endangered Species List a little longer. 

The Interior Department has rescinded regulations written during the last days of the Bush administration.  That will affect wolf delisting as Inland Northwest Correspondent Doug Nadvornick reports.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has directed federal department heads to withdraw regulations that haven’t yet been published in the Federal Register. That will give agency directors time to review them.

The rule that would remove wolves in Idaho and Montana from the Endangered Species List was to be published next Tuesday.

Some conservation groups hope this means the new president will order the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to scrap the delisting. But agency spokeswoman Sharon Rose says all this means is that another set of eyes will read the rule.

Sharon Rose: “No indication that there’s any dissatisfaction with it, that I’ve seen anyway. And so I think we’re just kind of going through the routine procedure now and we’ll see what kind of guidance we receive.”

Conservation groups aren’t the only ones dissatisfied with the rule proposed by the Bush administration. The state of Wyoming and its ranchers had threatened to sue because wolves in their state would have remained on the endangered list.