Beginning Friday, because of a federal decision to take gray wolves off the endangered species list, anyone can kill wolves for any reason across most of Wyoming. Only a small area near Yellowstone National Park will be off-limits, though Cowboy State wildlife officials plan to allow restricted hunting there for trophy animals.

In Utah, wolves would continue to have full protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. But if they step across the state line, they'll be in the same varmint category as coyotes, skunks, jack rabbits and stray cats.

"Anyone can kill those animals by just about any means possible. That's how wacky Wyoming's plan is," said Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance.

That organization is one of several wildlife advocacy and conservation groups poised to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its delisting decision made Feb. 27 and set to go into effect Friday. The groups argue that the action was premature because wolf management plans in Wyoming and Idaho are unacceptable.

But they can't file the lawsuit until April 28, leaving open at least a 30-day wolf free-fire zone in Wyoming. If too many wolves are killed - a situation no one expects - the groups say they would seek court action sooner.

The delisting affects the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf recovery area, which in Utah includes a small area east of Interstate 84 and I-15 and north of I-80. As it happens, the only two wild wolves that have been confirmed to live in Utah during the past 75 years were in that area.

The most recent was a gray wolf found dead in a coyote leg trap north of Tremonton in 2006. The other was captured alive in a trap near Morgan in 2002 and taken back to Wyoming, where it rejoined the Druid Peak pack near Yellowstone, which then moved down to Jackson. No radio-collar signals have been picked up for more than a year, Camenzind said, so the animal, which would be nine or 10 years old, likely is dead.

"He had quite a following here and in Utah," Camenzind said.

Transporting wolves is now forbidden, said Kevin Bunnell, mammals program coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife.

And even though the state would be allowed to take over wolf management Friday in the Utah recovery area, it won't.

"We don't know even if the plan is applicable," Bunnell said.

That's because the Utah wolf management plan of 2005 assumed all or most of the state would be delisted at the same time, not just the northeastern corner that lies in the recovery area. "We didn't even think of this scenario," Bunnell said.

Utah's predicament only adds to the complications and confusion surrounding the federal decision, said Dick Carter of the High Uintas Preservation Council in Hyrum.

The gray wolf reintroduction is at best a 10- to 12-year experiment, Carter said, when an adequate recovery time frame would be closer to 50 years. And the Utah territory in the recovery area shouldn't even be included.

"It's not part of the northern Rockies. It's just part of the [arbitrary] boundary area," Carter said. "It's such a tiny little place surrounded by freeways and housing. Wolves are not going to live there."

Carter agrees with state wildlife officials who say the wolf sightings near Flaming Gorge are credible. And if the pack originally came from Wyoming, now they are Utah wolves - and protected.

"Wolves, if they can get here they can live here. There's a lot of space," he said. "Sadly, we may all be dead before we see wolves welcomed back in Utah the way they should be."

Bunnell said Utah won't allow sport hunting of wolves "in the foreseeable future."

But the state has "strategies" where even protected wolves could be killed due to ivestock predation or as-yet-undefined effects on other wildlife, including big game.

The state Wildlife Board will take up the wolf issue at its April 10 meeting, Bunnell said. "We need clarification," he said.

"The biggest limiting factor to wolves establishing [even in the other states] is conflict with livestock. And that includes the Uintas. There's still sheep grazing in the Uintas," Bunnell said. Wolves that follow game down the mountains will run into livestock.

"The likelihood of conflict is high," he said.

phenetz@sltrib.com