MONTPELIER, Vt. -- In what environmentalists hailed as a major victory, a federal judge on Friday ordered the Bush administration to step up efforts to restore the gray wolf to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.

"The wolves are howlin"' in celebration, Patrick Parenteau, director of the environmental law clinic at Vermont Law School, said with a laugh. Parenteau, lead attorney in the case, said his students "did all the hard labor in the case. It's a nice victory for our students."

Judge J. Garvan Murtha, sitting in the U.S. District Court for Vermont, found that the Department of the Interior violated federal law in 2003 when it issued a rule saying no further efforts to restore the wolf were needed.

Efforts to restore wolves have been successful in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as well as in the northern Rocky Mountains. The 2003 rule moved wolves in those regions from endangered to threatened. The government also wanted to lump the upper Midwest states in with the Northeast in a new, 21-state eastern region, and declare that enough had been done to restore wolf populations throughout the eastern United States.

As it issued that rule, the Fish and Wildlife Service signaled that it soon would move to "delist" the wolf in the eastern part of the country, meaning it no longer would be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The public comment period recently closed on another rule that would do just that, Parenteau said, adding that Friday's ruling likely would result in that proposed rule being changed or scrapped.

A Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman, Diana Weaver, said officials from that agency would not be available immediately for comment.

In his decision, Murtha wrote that the Fish and Wildlife Service "simply cannot downlist or delist an area that it previously determined warrants an endangered listing because it `lumps together' a core population with a low to nonexistent population outside the core area."

If the government had prevailed, Parenteau said, "the only wolves that would exist in the eastern United States would be those wolf populations in the upper Great Lakes. That's what the final rule (put out by the Fish and Wildlife Service) said and that's what we challenged."

Environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, Vermont Natural Resources Council, Maine Wolf Coalition, Environmental Advocates of New York and Maine Audubon Society, joined in the lawsuit. They argued that good wolf habitats exist in northern Maine and in New York's Adirondack Mountains, and that northern Vermont and New Hampshire likely would become an important corridor for wolves migrating between those two habitats.

"While wolves are an Endangered Species Act success story in the Great Lakes and Northern Rockies, the administration wanted to declare total victory based on these partial wins," Peggy Struhsacker, program manager for National Wildlife Federation's wolf recovery team, said in a statement. "The administration was ready to announce the marathon over when the finish line is still over the next hill."

Even if the government is slow to promote reintroduction of the animals in the Northeast, it appears wolves may be moving into the region on their own.

Parenteau said wolves are already known to be roaming just north of the border in parts of Quebec between the St. Laurence River and the United States. He said there have been several sightings in northern New England, though the veracity of some is in dispute. He also said a large male wolf was killed by a hunter in New York state last year.

John Kostyack, lawyer for the National Wildlife Federation, called the ruling a "major victory for wolves and for all the people who care so much about preserving America's natural heritage."

Kostyack and Parenteau both said wolves are important predators at the top of the food chain that could help to keep burgeoning moose and beaver populations in check and help to run noisome coyotes out of the north woods.