The most important goal of reintroducing endangered species to their native habitat -- enabling them to live as wild creatures -- is being compromised by U.S. Department of the Interior practices, says an acting professor of law at UC Davis. In an article to be published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, Holly Doremus says the department too willingly surrenders the full protection reintroduced populations should have and too closely controls their movements. She says the department is erroneously using a section of the Endangered Species Act -- which permits additional controls to encourage states and private landowners to open their land for reintroduction -- to appease, instead, private-property owners' concerns about reintroductions on nearby federal lands. For example, although the Mexican wolves recently reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico are the only known population of the species outside captivity, the department has designated them "non-essential," giving them less protection on federal land. The agency has also committed itself to confining the wolves to federal lands and even agreed to remove them if a court rules that they are entitled to the full protection of the ESA. Doremus says that restricting the movement of a species reduces the probability that projects will produce viable populations. "The most pressing reform is simple acknowledgment that wild, broadly distributed populations are the goal of restoration," Doremus says, "together with open discussion of any decisions that make attainment of that goal more difficult."