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Gray wolves will regain federal protection in most of the lower 48 United States, after a court ruling on Thursday overturned the Trump administration’s decision to remove the animals from the endangered species list.

Senior District Judge Jeffrey S. White of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California found that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service did not adequately consider threats in declaring wolves conservation successful and removing the species from federal protection. It’s outside of the Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains where wolves are most prominently recuperated.

Although the decision to delist the wolves came to the Trump administration, the Biden administration defended it in court.

“Wolves need federal protection,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization that is spearheading the legal challenge. “The Fish and Wildlife Service should be ashamed to advocate delisting the gray wolf.”

A spokesperson for the Fish and Wildlife Service said the agency is reviewing the decision.

The Trump administration’s decision to delist comes despite concerns from some scientists who conducted the independent review necessary for the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove a species from federal protection.

The ruling applies to 44 of the lower 48 states. Wolves in Montana and Idaho will remain unprotected as they were delisted by Congress in 2011. Wyoming wolves were delisted by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2017. Wolves in New Mexico, which are considered a separate population, have never lost protection.

After that gray wolves removed from endangered species listwolf hunting has increased sharply in some states, including Wisconsin. In the spring of 2021, the state had to end the wolf hunting season early. After more than 200 wolves They were killed in less than 60 hours, exceeding the state’s quota of 119. The Ojibwe tribes were outraged that they decided not to fill their tribal quotas because wolves had a sacred place in their culture.

Interior Minister Deb Haaland released a statement. Article in USA Today this week she expressed her concerns about threats to wolves. He said he was worried by reports from Montana, where nearly 20 wolves have been killed after they left the borders of Yellowstone National Park this season. The Fish and Wildlife Service, it wrote, was considering whether it would be necessary to redeploy wolves in the Northern Rockies.

Wolves were some of the first animals to be protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the decision has been politically impeached ever since. There are great predators long disputed in Western stateswhere farmers complain about lost animals.

Hunter Nation, an advocacy group briefing the case, criticized the decision. “We are disappointed that an activist judge from California decided to tell farmers, ranchers and anyone else who supports a balanced ecosystem with prudent predator management that he knows better than they do,” said Luke Hilgemann, president and CEO of the group. .

Judge White was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2002.

Before the arrival of Europeans, gray wolves lived in North America from coast to coast in forests, grasslands, mountains, and wetlands. But two centuries of extermination campaigns resulted in their near extinction from the 48 lower states. By the mid-20th century, perhaps 1,000 individuals remained south of the Canadian border, particularly in northern Minnesota.

Their numbers began to increase after the species was placed under federal protection in the 1960s. In the mid-1990s, the Fish and Wildlife Service began a new chapter in wolves conservation by moving 31 wolves from Canada to Yellowstone National Park. Their numbers increased rapidly, and by 2020 about 6,000 wolves had spread to the western Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains, with small numbers spreading to Oregon, Washington, and California.

The United States is also home to the red wolf, a species listed as endangered. Its historical range included North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.