Sierra Club: Big Win for Gray Wolves in the Northern Rockies

In a huge win for Northern Rockies wolves, a federal judge in Montana ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service broke the law last year when it denied a petition to protect these large carnivores in the Northern Rocky Mountains under the Endangered Species Act. The agency must now reconsider whether to grant protections to wolves living in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, along with portions of Washington, Oregon and Utah. Wolves in the Northern Rockies were delisted in 2011 via a congressional appropriations rider. They were the first species to be congressionally delisted from the ESA. Since then the states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have implemented controversial practices in an effort to drive numbers down to a bare minimum. Those include neck snaring, baiting, use of night vision equipment and night shooting, large bag limits, year-round seasons and a bounty system. Read ON.