Feds Sued Over Mexican Gray Wolf

By KRWG News

Las Cruces – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is being sued over a petition that seeks to list the Mexican gray wolf on the federal endangered species list separate from other gray wolves in North America.

Conservationists submitted the petition in August, arguing a separate listing was biologically warranted and legally required.

WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit Tuesday in an effort to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to issue a finding on the petition. The lawsuit is part of a campaign started in December to persuade the Obama administration to make endangered species a priority.

The Mexican wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf. It was exterminated in the wild by the 1930s, but the government began reintroducing wolves in 1998 along the Arizona-New Mexico line.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.