A federal judge has reversed a policy made by former United States President Donald Trump and ordered on Thursday for federal protections of gray wolves in the majority of the country to be restored.
In a statement defending the order, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Jeffrey White, said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to show that wolf populations could be sustained in the Midwest and some parts of the West without protection given under the Endangered Species Act.
Federal Protection of Wolves
The judge found that the agency's analysis focused on two core wolf populations when it decided to remove the animals on the list of endangered species. White said the service failed to provide a reasonable interpretation of the "significant portion of its range' standard."
White's order will put wolves back on the endangered species list after they were removed in the last months of Trump's presidency. The judge's decision will also block state-run wolf hunting and trapping seasons, JSOnline reported.
Many environmentalist groups have praised White's order but warned that states with intense hunting pressure, such as Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, still posed a threat to the gray wolves in the United States. Roughly a century ago, hunters nearly wiped out the entire population of gray wolves in the majority of the country.
However, federal protections have helped in reestablishing many packs in recent decades by mitigating the number of animals hunted. The president and chief executive of Defenders of Wildlife, Jamie Rappaport Clark, said that White's decision was big news to many wolves found throughout much of the Lower 48 outside of Northern Rocky Mountain states.
The Washington Post reported that during an interview, Clark said that, while he and his colleagues were thrilled about the federal judge's ruling, the issue has not yet been solved. He argued that hunting in the northern Rockies was still a prevalent problem.
Endangered Species List
Kristen Boyles, who is an attorney at Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law organization that has helped lead the legal fight, said that wolves needed federal protection. She argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service should be ashamed of the decision to delist the animals from the endangered species list.
A Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman said that the agency was currently reviewing the decision. The Trump administration's decision to delist wolves was made despite concerns among scientists who performed the independent review that was required for the delisting.
White's order applies to 44 of the lower 48 states and excludes the three states mentioned previously while the fourth, New Mexico, never delisted the animals. Many states saw a sharp jump in hunting after gray wolves were removed from the endangered species list, including Wisconsin.
The state had to end its wolf hunting season early in the spring of 2021 after more than 200 wolves were reportedly killed in less than 60 hours, which far surpassed its quota of 119. Ojibwe tribes in the region expressed their frustrations of the situation and decided not to fill their tribal quota because, in their culture, wolves were sacred, as per the New York Times.
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