by MATTHEW BROWN and JOHN FLESHER, Associated PressThursday, February 10th 2022
Gray wolves (Wisconsin DNR photo/Herbert Lange)
BILLINGS, Mont (AP) — A judge restored federal protections for gray wolves across much of the U.S. on Thursday, after their removal in the waning days of the Trump administration exposed the predators to hunting that critics said would undermine their rebound from widespread extermination early last century.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to show wolf populations could be sustained in the Midwest and portions of the West without protection under the Endangered Species Act. The service also didn’t adequately consider threats to wolves outside those core areas, White said.
Wildlife advocates had sued the agency last year, saying state-sponsored hunting threatened to reverse the gray wolf’s recovery over the past several decades. The ruling does not directly impact wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and portions of several adjacent states that remain under state jurisdiction after protections in the region were lifted by Congress last decade.
Attorneys for the Biden administration had defended the Trump rule that removed protections, arguing wolves were resilient enough to bounce back even if their numbers dropped sharply due to intensive hunting.
At stake is the future of a species whose recovery from near-extinction has been heralded as a historic conservation success. That recovery has brought bitter blowback from hunters and farmers angered over wolf attacks on big game herds and livestock. They contend protections are no longer warranted.
