U.S. District Court Restores Federal Protection of Wolves

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA, February 10, 2022 – Animal Wellness Action (AWA), and the Center for a Humane Economy (CHE), and affiliates applauded a U.S. District Court for doing away with a last-minute Trump administration rule removing wolves from the Endangered Species Act and restoring protections for the species across most of the lower 48 states. AWA, CHE, the Sault St. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and more than a dozen other organizations filed an amicus brief in support of the challenge to the federal delisting.“The federal courts have again demonstrated that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has misread the science and the law and prematurely de-listed wolves,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “This restoration of federal protections restores critical protections for wolves, especially in the Great Lakes region, and now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should reassess its misreading of the ongoing assault on wolves by states in the Northern Rockies.”

In sweeping aside the rule, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White found that the “deficiencies in the Final Rule are serious and weigh in favor of vacatur.” The judge’s ruling means that it is once again illegal to kill wolves for sport in all states except the Northern Rockies, where the federal government turned over control of wolf populations to Montana and Idaho in another set of rulemakings several years ago.

The ruling comes after Animal Wellness Action, the Center for a Humane Economy, Project Coyote, Friends of Wisconsin Wolf and Wildlife and Wisconsin resident Pat Clark succeeded in a legal action against the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), enjoining the wolf hunt in that state. That decision rested largely on the judge’s concerns with DNR’s inability to finalize rules related to wolf hunting in the state despite the law providing for the hunts being enacted in 2011. Pointing to a failure of democratic decision-making, Judge Frost acknowledged the “perverse result of an emergency rule that has lasted about a decade.”

While successful in ending Wisconsin’s massacre of wolves planned for the fall of 2021, the restoration of federal protections was critical to long term protections of wolf populations in Wisconsin and across many other states.

Animal Wellness Action (AWA) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(4) organization with a mission of helping animals by promoting legal standards forbidding cruelty. We champion causes that alleviate the suffering of companion animals, farm animals, and wildlife. We advocate for policies to stop dogfighting and cockfighting and other forms of malicious cruelty and to confront factory farming and other systemic forms of animal exploitation. To prevent cruelty, we promote enacting good public policies, and we work to enforce those policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. We believe helping animals helps us all.

The Animal Wellness Foundation (AWF) is a Los Angeles-based private charitable organization with a mission of helping animals by making veterinary care available to everyone with a pet, regardless of economic ability. We organize rescue efforts and medical services for dogs and cats in need and help homeless pets find a loving caregiver. We are advocates for getting veterinarians to the front lines of the animal welfare movement; promoting responsible pet ownership; and vaccinating animals against infectious diseases such as distemper. We also support policies that prevent animal cruelty and that alleviate suffering. We believe helping animals helps us all.

The Center for a Humane Economy (CHE) is a non-profit organization that focuses on influencing the conduct of corporations to forge a humane economic order. The first organization of its kind in the animal protection movement, the Center encourages businesses to honor their social responsibilities in a culture where consumers, investors, and other key stakeholders abhor cruelty and the degradation of the environment and embrace innovation as a means of eliminating both.

contact WAYNE PACELLE
ANIMAL WELLNESS ACTION
+1 202-420-0446
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