Safari Club International (SCI) is dismayed to report that a federal judge in Montana issued a ruling that may force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to place wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming back under federal management.

In a ruling issued yesterday, this judge determined that the Service’s most recent conclusion that gray wolves in the Western United States no longer qualify as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was “erroneous.”

While this decision leaves the current ESA listing for wolves in place for the time being, the Service must reconsider whether wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains should again be listed under the ESA. This decision represents another example of biased judges creating roadblocks for sound, science-backed conservation policy.

The Service has sought to remove wolves from the ESA lists for decades. In 2009, the Service published a science-based decision to remove wolves from the ESA lists in the Northern Rocky Mountains (which covers the entirety of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the eastern third of Oregon and Washington, and a small corner of Utah). This same district court invalidated that decision. This came as little surprise as environmental, anti-hunting activist groups have challenged not only each delisting decision by the Service, but also Congressional action in 2011 that mandated Northern Rocky Mountain wolves be removed from ESA lists.

SCI has been part of every lawsuit, but despite having science and law on our side, activist courts have consistently overturned the Service’s findings, arrogantly substituting their judgment for that of the Service and Congress.

Since this process began in 2009, wolf populations have exploded in number and expanded in range throughout the Northern Rocky Mountains. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming together conserve more than 2,600 wolves, many times the wolf recovery threshold of 300 wolves established by the Service in 2009.

“SCI is frustrated that the court ignored the reality of successful wolf conservation in the Western U.S. and instead ruled in favor of the plaintiffs’ arguments that are clearly biased against state wildlife management and counter to the law and the science,” said SCI CEO W. Laird Hamberlin. “SCI will appeal this mistaken ruling as soon as possible in order to defend legal, regulated hunting as part of science driven, state wildlife management programs for wolf species.”

About Safari Club International

SCI is the leader in defending the freedom to hunt and promoting sustainable-use wildlife conservation worldwide. It is the only hunting rights organization with a Washington, D.C.-based national and international advocacy team, in-house counsel, and an all-species focus.

SCI maintains one of the longest-running legal programs to defend hunting rights, and its newly-formed SCI Center for Conservation Law and Education, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, unites SCI’s in-house legal counsel, state liaisons, and the Hunters’ Embassy on Capitol Hill to bolster SCI’s mission. More information on the Center is available at http://ccle.safariclub.org .