But a coalition of conservation and animal rights groups is trying to convince a federal judge that 1,500 wolves is not enough - that the animals should be put back on the federal endangered species list until the population grows by at least another 33 percent, and state management plans are put in place to maintain that level.

This is one of the central arguments put forth by the coalition of 12 conservation and animal rights organizations in a lawsuit filed April 28 in U.S. District Court in Montana.

The coalition is attempting to overturn the federal government's decision to delist wolves in the Northern Rockies, and is seeking a court injunction to halt state management of wolves while the case is pending.

The petitioners - including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society and the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance - contend that the Northern Rockies wolf population is too small to maintain a genetically viable population in the long term.

But state officials say projections of a future genetic bottleneck are "far-fetched," and the claim that wolves will eventually become inbred is seriously flawed.

Move the goalposts?

The original federal recovery goal for wolves in the Northern Rockies was to build a population of 300 gray wolves total: about 100 in the greater Yellowstone area, 100 in central Idaho and 100 in northwest Montana.

The federal government's original objective - drafted in 1987 and finalized in 1994 - also called for at least 30 breeding pairs spread among the three groups, and some genetic exchange among the groups.

Today there are an estimated 1,515 wolves in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho and more than 100 breeding pairs, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But Sylvia Fallon, a geneticist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said scientific knowledge has grown significantly in the past 20 years. Geneticists now understand that there should be 2,000 to 5,000 wolves in the Northern Rockies before the federal government can, in good faith, call the species "recovered" here.

Also, she said, it appears that the three main subgroups of wolves in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have remained genetically isolated from one another, and interbreeding between the groups will be essential to long-term viability.

"If you went to the doctor for some kind of health problem, you wouldn't want him relying on science from 20 years ago; you would want him to use the latest and best science available," Fallon said. "The recovery goals of 300 wolves across these three states were established over 20 years ago, and there's been a lot of developing science since that time. The (Fish and Wildlife Service) has not incorporated any of this evolving science into its decision."

The original goals were not based on any kind of sound scientific calculations, Fallon said. Rather, they were based upon what were thought to be achievable aspirations at the time.

Before wolves were delisted, Ed Bangs, the federal gray wolf recovery coordinator, and Mike Jimenez, who was Wyoming's federal wolf coordinator at the time, both argued that wolves in the Northern Rockies are a genetically robust and diverse population, and that genetic degradation over time would be highly unlikely.

Regardless, they said, if predictions of a genetic bottleneck began to come true, a few wolves could be introduced into the three main populations, once again, and that would solve the problem.

Fallon, however, takes issue with that approach.

"If that's the solution, it means (Fish and Wildlife) has not achieved a self-sustaining, recovered population of wolves," she said. "The better solution is actually getting the wolves in Yellowstone connected naturally to large numbers of other wolves, so that they can naturally exchange genetic materials."

'Far-fetched'

Officials with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department say Fallon's and the coalition's arguments for a "natural" and unfettered population of 2,000-plus wolves are impractical: They ignore the basic fact that this current wolf population was reintroduced to the area to begin with, in 1995 and '96, and the landscape is dramatically different from when the animals roamed here historically.

And the notion that wolves, at their current numbers, will not interbreed is a stretch, said Bill Rudd, assistant division chief with the Game and Fish Department.

"This idea that there will be no genetic exchange seems like a far-fetched assumption to make," Rudd said. "We know that wolves are capable of very long-distance movements, and there's really no reason to expect that the exchange won't take place."

Genetic modeling of the type the lawsuit and Fallon are citing is based on mathematical calculations that require a good deal of postulation and a large number of built-in assumptions, Rudd said - including projections regarding the amount of genetic material being exchanged and the distance the wolves will disperse.

"From a practical experience point of view, I don't know how they can possibly know all those things," Rudd said. "Many, many of the populations that have been reintroduced to different areas would be considered way too small by genetic models, and their possibility of success deemed very low, but many of those populations are successful and healthy."

The bison herd in Grand Teton National Park, for example, began with just a handful of animals, and that herd has grown large and is genetically healthy and diverse, he said.

But even if the predictions of inbreeding were to come true, he said, the solution would be simple: Officials could introduce a few more genetically diverse wolves into the populations.

"(Opponents) would argue that's not natural, so it wouldn't count," Rudd said. "But from a practical point of view, I don't see where they envisions all these (thousands of) wolves that they say are necessary living on the landscape."

The wolves' historic range has been severely altered since the animals were all but eradicated from the region in the first half of the 20th century, and it's no longer realistic to expect the canines to fit in throughout the West as they used to, Rudd said.