Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the federal government will continue with a plan to remove the gray wolf from Endangered Species Act protection in all Northern Rocky Mountain states except Wyoming.

Salazar made the announcement during a teleconference Friday.

The plan echoes a Bush-era proposal that also would have left Wyoming out of the delisting plan.

“We are going forward with the delisting of the gray wolf,” Salazar said. “The scientists have concluded that recovery has occurred. It is a great example of how the Endangered Species Act can, in fact, work.”

Salazar said Wyoming has failed to put together a program that gives officials confidence the gray wolf can be recovered.

“Frankly, the scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service do not believe that the recovery plan in Wyoming is adequate,” he said.

“We can make the Endangered Species Act work to accomplish its purposes, especially when we have the cooperation of the states and the agencies in those states. I do not believe that we should hold [Idaho and Montana] hostage to the inadequacies of what we have seen in Wyoming. We do not believe that you should punish those states that have done well.

“We will be working with Wyoming to try to come up with a joint way forward, so we can get to a point where we have obtained the objectives of the Endangered Species Act,” Salazar said.

Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said he was disappointed with the decision to press forward with the delisting.

Camenzind said the proposal is not much different than one that resulted in an injunction in June from a district court judge in Montana, with the exception that Wyoming isn’t included.

“If anything, that would make it more vulnerable to a court challenge,” Camenzind said.

Camenzind also has problems with Idaho’s management plan, which he said opens the door for killing as many as 300 wolves.

“That is not going to meet the requirements for genetic exchange,” he said.

Camenzind said excluding Wyoming from the delisting rule would result in three management strategies for the Greater Yellowstone population: one from Montana, one from the National Park Service and one from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“You’re taking one population and managing it three different ways,” he said. “That makes no management sense at all.”

Camenzind said he expects the state of Wyoming and conservation groups to file lawsuits against the decision.

“It will make for interesting bed partners,” he said.

Melanie Stein, spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, said Greater Yellowstone wolves should be treated as one population.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be working with the state of Wyoming to create a scientifically sound wolf management plan,” Stein said. “Northern Rockies wolves should be treated as one connected population. It’s short-sighted and inappropriate to delist wolves state by state. Wolves don’t know political boundaries.”

Eric Keszler, public information officer for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said he also was disappointed in the decision.

“We feel like Wyoming’s management plan is adequate to maintain a recovered population of wolves in Wyoming and also to deal with the conflicts that happen between wolves and people and wolves and livestock,” he said.

U.S. Sens. Mike Enzi, John Barrasso and U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, all Wyoming Republicans, spoke out against the decision to exclude the state.

“Delisting the wolf in Montana and Idaho but not Wyoming simply does not make sense. Wolves don’t check for state boundaries,” Barrasso said in a statement. “Today’s announcement makes clear that ‘change’ has not come to Washington. Wyoming has honored its commitments to recover the wolf. It’s time Washington did the same.”