BILLINGS, Mont. - Wildlife advocates on Monday asked for an emergency injunction to stop state-sponsored gray wolf hunts that have claimed at least 71 of the animals in the Northern Rockies since late August.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is being asked to halt the hunts in Idaho and Montana within 21 days. Wolf harvest figures are expected to climb sharply this month as general rifle seasons in the two states get under way and thousands more hunters take to the field.

"As the snow falls it becomes much more easier to track these animals and many more may be taken in the next few weeks," said Mark Salvo with WildEarth Guardians, which was joined by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Clearwater in filing the injunction request.

"We don't believe wolves have recovered in this region and we don't believe states should be hunting wolves," Salvo added.

The injunction request came in an appeal of a U.S. District Court ruling that upheld this spring's removal of the region's wolves from the federal endangered species list. Those protections were lifted under legislation passed by Congress in defiance of prior court rulings.

State officials say they intend to maintain viable wolf populations but want the predator's numbers reduced to curb attacks on livestock and big game herds. More than 250 wolves were killed in the two states when protections for the animals were lifted in 2009 before being reinstated by a judge.

So far in 2011, hunters have killed 11 wolves in Montana and 60 in Idaho.

Hunted to near-extermination across the lower 48 states last century, wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies in the mid-1990s. An estimated 1,300 of the animals roamed Idaho and Montana at the end of last year.

Idaho officials have not set a quota for this year's hunt, which runs through June. They say they will maintain at least 150 of the state's more than 800 wolves, as required under a management plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Idaho Fish and Game Deputy Director Jim Unsworth said Monday that the hunt was proceeding in an "orderly" manner despite dire predictions that the state would drive wolf numbers to unacceptable levels.

Montana has a quota of 220 wolves for a season that runs through Dec. 31. Officials there have pledged to shut down the hunt as soon as that figure is reached.

"We know everybody is watching us closely and we want to get it right," said Tom Palmer with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "This is wildlife management at its best and we're going to keep really close tabs on it."

In August, the 9th Circuit rejected a similar emergency injunction request from the advocacy groups, although that left the door open for future reconsideration. Representatives of the advocacy groups said they wanted to try again given that several hundred more wolves could be killed in coming months.

Oral arguments in the case are set for Nov. 8.

"Before it was just theoretical. Now we have some numbers and can point out that 37,000 hunters are about to be out in the field looking for a little more than 1,000 wolves," said Michael Garrity with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Even without hunting, wolves are killed regularly in the Rockies by government wildlife agents responding to predator attacks on livestock. At least 95 wolves have been killed for livestock depredations in Idaho and Montana this year, according to federal and state officials who say hunting could lessen the need for government killings.

Wildlife advocates take a different view, saying the combined pressures of government killings and hunting could push the population to the point where it no longer would be viable.

More than 300 wolves in Wyoming remain on the endangered species list because of past disagreements between the state and federal wildlife officials over how the animals should be managed. But the two sides recently resolved those differences, paving the way for wolf hunts in Wyoming possibly as early as next year.