The U.S. government attorneys will appear before a federal judge in Montana on Friday to defend the decision made by the Trump administration’s final days that removed gray wolf protections over most of the country, as Republican-led states have sought to reduce wolf numbers through deadly hunting and trapping.
Wildlife advocates fear that the state-sponsored wolf hunts may rapidly reverse decades of progress in many parts of the West and Midwest, allowing gray wolves to return to areas where they haven’t been seen in decades.
They are asking the federal judge in Oakland, California to reinstate wolves under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, which is supposed to safeguard species from endangerment.
The attorneys for the state of Wyoming, on the other hand, argue that wolves are strong enough to bounce back even if their numbers plummet. There’s no need to reintroduce them under federal oversight, according to US Justice Department lawyers who filed legal papers ahead of the hearing.
The suit does not apply to wolves in six states in the northern United States, where they were stripped of their endangered species status a decade ago.
In response to the repeal of some hunting restrictions in Idaho and Montana, federal officials have said they will consider whether those protections should be reinstated in western states. It might take a year or more to complete.
This season’s hunt was recently put on hold in Wisconsin by a state judge, two weeks before it was supposed to begin, after hunters exceeded a state harvest quota last winter and killed 218 wolves in just four days.
The state’s kill limit for wolves had been set by conservatives on a wildlife board at 300, prompting a lawsuit from wildlife conservation organizations and a federal suit from six Chippewa tribes that consider the creature sacred.
The board later defied the state agency empowered by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, reducing the kill limit to 130 wolves after it had been increased to 140 under court order.
Wolves were nearly exterminated in most areas of the United States by the 1930s as a result of government-sponsored poisoning and trapping efforts.
Following the extirpation, a small population in the western Great Lakes region has grown to 4,400 wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
After wolves from Canada were reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995, there are now over 2,000 of them living throughout six states in the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest. WOLVES IN THE ROCKIES: Wolves have been legal to hunt once again for the past decade.
However, wolves are still scarce in most of their historical range. Wildlife advocates argue that continued safeguards are required so they may continue to develop in California, Colorado, Oregon, and other states.
In Wyoming, wolves are also hunted, and officials are considering wolf hunting seasons in Michigan and Minnesota.
Environmentalists were furious when the Biden administration opposed the revocation of protections for wolves, arguing that the election of a Democrat would alter US policy on wolves.
Since the 1970s, both Democratic and Republican administrations alike have attempted to repeal or reduce federal wolf protections that were put in place during the George W. Bush administration.
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