Last year, the Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service stripped gray wolves’ protections under the Endangered Species Act.
As reported by NationofChange, many conservationists countered the Service’s move saying that gray wolves are “functionally extinct” throughout the United States as the species continues to be hunted, trapped and poisoned.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems as though they will continue to uphold this decision.
Administration lawyers asked a federal judge in California Friday to reject a lawsuit brought by environmental groups seeking to restore protections, signaling the new administration’s decision and prompting an outcry from the activists behind the suit, reports EcoWatch.
“It’s shocking that Biden officials are backing Trump’s ruthless decision to strip protections from wolves. This move means more of our nation’s wolves will be slaughtered in states where politics have trumped science. Biden can’t say his administration supports science-based decisions and then let Wisconsin, Montana and Idaho turn into a bloodbath for wolves,” says Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.
As reported by Courthouse News Service, while the decision to halt the protections came in the final months of the Trump presidency, the saga over wolf killing regulations has been ongoing for decades ever since rampant wolf killing in the early 20th century sent wolf population numbers plummeting. Gray wolves have largely resurged in many parts in the country ever since federal protections kicked in, with particular success reported around the northwest Rocky Mountains and some of the western Great Lakes regions. Some states, however, maintain that this recovery was perhaps too successful and have made a series of pushes to ease restrictions on the killing of wolves.
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