The Colorado-based Biodiversity Legal Foundation has petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to place the Alexander Archipelago wolf of southeastern Alaska on its list of threatened species, even though this subspecies of the gray wolf is nowhere close to extinction, and its numbers are not declining.

"We want to set a precedent here," says Jasper Carlton, director of the foundation. Carlton is basing his petition on the theory that proposed logging of the Tongass National Forest would harm the wolf by depleting the stock of sitka black-tailed deer, its main food source. "Let's not wait until a species is near extinction before we act," he says.

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