In a huge win for Northern Rockies wolves, a federal judge in Montana ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service broke the law last year when it denied a petition to protect these large carnivores in the Northern Rocky Mountains under the Endangered Species Act. The agency must now reconsider whether to grant protections to wolves living in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, along with portions of Washington, Oregon and Utah.
Wolves in the Northern Rockies were delisted in 2011 via a congressional appropriations rider. They were the first species to be congressionally delisted from the ESA. Since then the states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have implemented an assault on wolves more reminiscent of the 1800s than they are of modern wildlife management. They’ve implemented controversial practices in an effort to drive numbers down to a bare minimum. Those include neck snaring, baiting, use of night vision equipment and night shooting, large bag limits, year-round seasons and a bounty system in an effort to drive wolf numbers down.
The states have done so under the guise of needing to boost deer and elk populations – even though all three states have healthy big game herds and are in fact trying to reduce deer and elk numbers, too. In essence, this ruling is a huge validation of our message that the Northern Rockies states’ management plans would necessitate relisting.This week’s ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed last year by the four conservation and animal protection groups who submitted the petition in 2021: Humane World for Animals (formerly Humane Society of the United States), Humane World Action Fund, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club.
We thank our members and supporters for speaking out and letting it be known that the states’ backwards approaches to wolf management are not acceptable in 2025. We’ll keep fighting for wolves, their habitat and a return to reasonable management that doesn’t call for driving numbers down for no valid reason.