A federal appeals court has retained federal protection for gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region, ruling that the government made crucial errors when it dropped them from the endangered species list five years ago.
The court upheld a district judge who overruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which had determined that wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin had recovered after being shot, trapped and poisoned nearly out of existence in the previous century. They’ve bounced back and now total about 3,800.
Even so, courts have sided with environmental groups led by the Humane Society of the United States, which have sued to block the service’s repeated efforts to strip wolves in the region of their protected status and put states in charge of them. The service made its latest attempt in 2011. U.S. Judge Beryl A. Howell struck down the plan three years later.
In a 3-0 ruling, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the service had not sufficiently considered important factors. They included how loss of historical territory would affect the predator’s recovery and how removing the Great Lakes population segment from the endangered list would affect wolves in other parts of the nation.
As long as wolves are on the protected list, they cannot be killed unless human life is at risk. That means the three states cannot resume the hunting and trapping seasons they had when wolves were under their control.
A spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service had no immediate comment.
The same court took wolves in Wyoming off the endangered list in May.
Environmental advocates cheered the ruling on Great Lakes wolves, saying they remain vulnerable despite their comeback in recent decades.
Organizations representing farmers and ranchers, who want authority to shoot wolves preying on livestock, have long pushed to drop them from the federal list, which hunting groups also favor.
Rep. Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican, urged the Trump administration to appeal the court ruling.
“Our farmers deserve to be able to protect their livestock, and they should not suffer because of the decisions made by an overreaching federal government a thousand miles away,” Duffy said.
Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle said Congress and wildlife regulators should “recognize that wolves provide an enormous range of ecological and economic services to the regions where they live, and they do it for free.”