The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has rescinded an order calling for the shooting of a female Mexican gray wolf believed to have killed too many cows in southwestern New Mexico.
The federal agency says in a letter dated Friday that the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center offered to take the wolf into captivity for research and that the animal won't be released into the wild again.
The last time the federal agency killed an endangered wolf due to livestock problems was in 2007.
Environmentalists had opposed the order to shoot the wolf.
The Mexican gray wolf was added to the federal endangered species list in 1976, and a captive-breeding program was started.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.