ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — After repeated failures over decades, US wildlife officials have finally drafted a recovery plan for endangered wolves that once roamed parts of the American Southwest and northern Mexico.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is under a court order to complete the plan for the Mexican gray wolf by the end of November.

The draft document released Thursday calls for focusing recovery of the wolves in core areas of the predators’ historic range. That means south of Interstate 40 in the two states and in Mexico. The document also addresses threats, such as genetic diversity.

The recovery plan is a long time coming, as the original guidance for how to restore wolves to the Southwest was adopted in 1982. The lack of a plan has spurred numerous legal challenges by environmentalists and skirmishes over states’ rights.

Fish and Wildlife has suggested that a population of at least 320 Mexican gray wolves would have to survive in the wild over a period of several years before the species can be considered recovered. That’s nearly three times the number of wolves currently in New Mexico and Arizona.

Environmentalists have pushed for years for more captive wolves to be released, but ranchers and elected leaders in rural communities have pushed back because the predators sometimes attack domestic livestock and wild game.

Last year, the Interior Department’s internal watchdog said Fish and Wildlife had not fulfilled its obligation to remove Mexican gray wolves that preyed on pets and cattle.

ASSOCIATED PRESS