Figure out what lens(s) you will want/need (can afford to purchase) and work backward from there. For wildlife photography, I'd venture that the lens is much, MUCH, more important than the difference between the 7D and the D7000.
+1 to this
Camera bodies come and go and heck there is always going to be the case that one company will upman the other for so long until the next round of bodies come out. Half the time this ends up nitpicking because, honestly, neither Canon nor Nikon fail at making camera bodies and both get to a very high standard.
Lenses are more important for wildlife work - mostly because good quality and long reach means expensive. Getting good long glass is important for wildlife photography unless you're Steve Irwin good at getting close to things (even then if you are working at a distance is perferable!).
Both Canon and Nikon make extensive professional grade series of lenses, but they do cost - a lot. Setting you back between £1K and over £10 per lens. You'll have to decide on which range can most suitably give you quality reach at an affordable price. Canon does have an edge here having a 300mm f4 IS L, 400mm f5.6 L and 100-400mm IS L lens in a similar price bracket over around £1000. Each one of them is hotly debated over and each one is a good solid choice for specific circumstances.
Nikon only has a 300mm f4 in that price bracket - but they do have some older lenses which can be used instead whilst retaining good functionality - I can't comment on those however as I don't know the older Nikon range well enough.
In addition don't forget Sigma who make some very good quality long range lenses. A 50-500mm, 150-500mm series of zooms can be more affordable and give you some long reach; whilst they've also a cheaper 120-400mm. Of course cheaper long lenses won't have the same power that top end ones will and most of the long zooms you'll want to use a stop closed down on the aperture when at their long end to help preserve sharpness. However they do provide ideal options for getting varied reach.
From there you can jump up to 120-300mm f2.8 OS from Sigma - a heavy and expensive, but cheap way to get to 300mm f2.8 (a popular range for using with teleconveters).
The second hand markets can also be good to use, however with high grade long lenses you won't get huge discounts second hand - so long as the optics are good they'll still sell at a very high price.
I beat you to it Derrel
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