On May 21, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, along with Safari Club International and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, completed briefing in a trio of lawsuits brought by animal extremist groups to relist wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountain region under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The organization has doubled down on asking the court to issue a judgment in its favor due to the animal extremists’ lack of standing and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) proper denial of the extremists’ attempts to relist gray wolves in the Northern Rockies.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance and its conservation partners filed its final reply brief with the District Court in Montana, marking the end of briefing a year after successfully intervening in the lawsuits to defend the denials by FWS. It will present its arguments next month to the District Judge in Missoula, Montana. Based on the thorough defenses by the Sportsmen’s Alliance, conservation partners, state agencies and FWS, Sportsmen's Alliance is confident the judge will agree that FWS very clearly considered the best available science to support the denials. As noted by FWS, “now and into the foreseeable future, wolves are likely to retain a healthy level of abundance” throughout the Western United States. No misdirection or falsehoods presented by the animal extremists can change that.
“The service’s denial of the petitions was robust, well-informed, and appropriate,” said Michael Jean, litigation counsel for the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation. “Through the various rounds of briefings, the animal extremists have failed to produce a viable argument to the contrary. Quite the opposite, the service and defendant-intervenors have shown over-and-over that the service’s decision must stand.”
In February 2024, FWS denied the petitions to relist wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountain (NRM) region—Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon, and a small portion of northern Utah. The petitions alternatively requested that the delisted NRM wolves be incorporated into a western states population, comprised of every state to the north and west of, and including, Colorado, and relist them under the ESA. Numerous animal rights organizations then filed a trio of lawsuits challenging the denial.
Keep an eye on americanhunter.org for more on the story, or head over to sportsmensalliance.org for firsthand updates.
