USA: Federal judge orders greater protection for grey wolves

Conservation groups say the decision brings hope for recovery, despite aggressive state measures to kill grey wolves.

A federal judge in Montana ruled that the US Fish and Wildlife Service violated the law last year when it rejected a petition to protect grey wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains under the Endangered Species Act. The agency must now reconsider whether to grant protection to the wolves living in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, as well as in parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah.

The ruling is the response to a lawsuit filed last year by four conservation and animal welfare organisations that had drafted and submitted the petition in 2021.

Wolves are highly intelligent, social animals that play an irreplaceable role in the ecosystems in which they live, said Kitty Block, President and CEO of Humane World for Animals. Today's ruling gives hope that we can restore protection for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, but only if the federal government fulfils its duty under the Endangered Species Act. These animals deserve protection and must not be abandoned as they struggle to return to the landscapes where they once roamed freely.

«The recovery of the grey wolf population in the western United States stands at a crossroads, and it should therefore not once again fall into the crosshairs of the killing campaigns that drove it to the brink of extinction,” said Sara Amundson, President of the Humane World Action Fund. “The attempts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to deny these animals the urgently needed federal protection betray not only the letter of the law, but also countless Americans who campaign for the protection of wolves.”

Ruling condemns federal government

Today's ruling by Senior District Judge Donald Molloy condemned the government for ignoring the potential for the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado and the rest of the southern Rocky Mountains, including most of Utah, northern New Mexico and northern Arizona.

Molloy found that, under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service is obliged to consider the southern Rocky Mountains and other parts of the wolf's historic range. He further concluded that, in rejecting the petition, the agency unlawfully disregarded the potential significance of the wolf's incipient return to Colorado through natural dispersal and historic reintroductions.

“With this court ruling, hope is emerging for a genuine recovery of the wolf population across the entire West,” said Collette Adkins, Director of Carnivore Conservation at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The judge reasoned that the Fish and Wildlife Service's unambitious view of recovery contradicts the Endangered Species Act. Recovery requires a return to places such as the vast southern Rocky Mountains, where wolves once lived and can return, provided they are protected by the Endangered Species Act.”

Increasing state-level threats to wolves

The conservation associations' petition under the Endangered Species Act was filed amid growing hostility towards wolves in several northern Rocky Mountain states:

In Idaho, recent changes to state laws authorise the state to commission private contractors to kill wolves, permit hunters to purchase an unlimited number of wolf hunting licences, and allow hunters to kill wolves by pursuing them with dogs and off-road vehicles. Together with Montana, the state grants bounties as “reimbursement” for killed wolves.

Recent changes to the law in the state of Montana permit the killing of wolves with bait and snares, and recently proposed regulations would enable a single hunter to kill 15 wolves and trap another 15, should they ultimately be adopted.

In almost all of Wyoming, wolves are regarded as “predators” and may be killed without a permit in nearly any manner and at any time. Hunters in Wyoming have killed several wolves just a few kilometres from the border with Colorado, where wolves are finally returning to the state through dispersal and reintroduction efforts.

“The recovery of the wolf population depends on responsible management by the states, and Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have shown that they are utterly unsuited to managing this species,” said Nick Gevock, campaign strategist for the Sierra Club Northern Rockies. “Judge Molloy's ruling means that the US Fish and Wildlife Service must now start all over again to decide whether federal-level management is required to secure the survival of wolves and their important role in the ecosystem.”

Today's ruling overturns the Fish and Wildlife Service's rejection of the petition, and the agency must now reconsider its response. The agency has 60 days to appeal the decision.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are represented by lawyers from the Center for Biological Diversity and the animal welfare law division of Humane World for Animals.

Addendum August 2026: The recreational hunting lobby files an appeal

It was not the authorities but the opposing side who made use of the 60-day period. As early as August 2025, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, the Safari Club International and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation lodged an appeal against Judge Molloy's ruling with the 9th Federal Court of Appeals. The consequence: the hunting and trapping season on grey wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming continues unchanged for now. A representative of the recreational hunting associations publicly reckoned that the ruling could be blocked in this way for a year or longer.

In December 2025, a court rejected a motion to halt the ongoing wolf season in Montana. The state had raised the kill quota from 334 to 500 animals and allows individual recreational hunters to kill up to 30 wolves per season.

Instead of implementing the demanded protection, the US Fish and Wildlife Service maintained its opposing stance: at the end of 2025 the authority declared a nationwide protected status for grey wolves “no longer appropriate” and announced that it would not draw up an updated recovery plan. The Center for Biological Diversity thereupon filed suit again in early 2026. In April 2026, the recreational hunting associations submitted their opening brief to the 9th Federal Court of Appeals. A year after the celebrated ruling, the protection of grey wolves thus remains blocked, and the predator continues to be exposed to recreational hunting in the western United States.

How politics and recreational hunting undermine the protection of the wolf elsewhere too, and where courts had to step in, is shown in our dossier «The wolf in Europe: how politics and recreational hunting undermine species protection».