ON MARCH 28th Ed Bangs will open the champagne. Mr Bangs is the government's chief wolf recovery co-ordinator, and on that day the grey wolf of the northern Rocky Mountains will lose its federal protection. The Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) says the population has reached sustainable levels. Mr Bangs has worked 20 years to see this moment.

Wolves were once found almost everywhere in the West, but settlers and ranchers made short work of them. The last one disappeared from the Yellowstone region in 1926. By 1973, when the Endangered Species Act became law, only a few wolves remained in northern Michigan and Minnesota.

After long and stormy debate, the federal government reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone and parts of Idaho in 1995. The greater Yellowstone area, encompassing parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, now has a population of 1,500 wolves. These three states will now each manage their own wolves. The USFWS will monitor their populations for the next five years. It has set a minimum of 300 wolves and 30 breeding pairs, split equally among the three states.

Idaho, Montana and Wyoming plan to allow the animal to be hunted as trophy game. The delisting also allows ranchers to shoot wolves that prey on their stock or threaten pets. Conservation and animal-rights groups plan to sue, fearing that wolves will die in huge numbers. Mr Bangs thinks otherwise. “Those states have done a superb job of managing their deer, elk and bear. I expect they'll do the same for wolves. If they don't, we'll take it back.”

The wolf has been a pain to some stockmen, but has hardly put ranchers out of business. The Defenders of Wildlife, a wolfish outfit, says coyotes kill 20 times more cattle than wolves do. It also says that wolves are responsible, in a typical year, for less than 2.5% of sheep deaths.