The Clinton administration, seeking a compromise between environmentalists and ranchers, moved a step closer Wednesday to bringing wolves back to Yellowstone National Park, perhaps even this year.

The Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service unveiled a proposal to gradually reintroduce gray wolves over a five years period to the park as well as to an area in central Idaho. Under the plan, the wolf population in the park would grow to more than 100 by the year 2002.Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is prohibited by law from making a final decision on the proposed plan for 30 days, but he and other senior Interior officials made clear at a news conference that they look favorably on the proposal.

Babbitt said it would allow for wolf reintroduction and restore the park's biological equilibrium, which he said has been harmed by lack of predators. For example, he said, the park's elk herd has grown enormously in recent years.

"The equilibrium is best maintained by the presence of natural predators such as the gray wolf," said Babbitt, although adding that if the wolf were to be returned to the region, "some measure of predator control is, in fact, necessary" to ease the concern of ranchers.

The proposed plan would allow ranchers to kill wolves on private land if they are attacking livestock and to "harass" wolves if they are found in the vicinity of livestock.

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Wolves disappeared from the Yellowstone region in northwestern Wyoming more than 60 years ago as a result of a government-endorsed extermination program.

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