A coalition of 12 environmental groups is taking the US government to court in an attempt to overturn the gray wolf’s loss of protected status.

After its ‘endangered’ status was removed, management of the wolf reverted to state control. Now environmentalists are claiming some states are too carefree with culling.

“Actions by the states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, and by individuals, since wolves were delisted demonstrate the need to resume federal safeguards for wolves until state plans are in place that ensure a sustainable wolf population in the region,” says a statement from the groups.

“For example, on the very day delisting took effect — March 28, 2008 — Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed into law a new Idaho law allowing Idaho citizens to kill wolves without a permit whenever wolves are annoying, disturbing, or “worrying” livestock or domestic animals.”

According to the LA Times the action was not unexpected and wolf management officials in the three states are to “intervene on behalf of the federal government”.

“We believe it was time to de-list the Rocky Mountain population of the gray wolf, and we stand by that,” says Sharon Rose of the Denver office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Reuters).

Wyoming Game and Fish spokesman Eric Keszler called the groups’ complaints ill-informed. “In the trophy game area, where 90 percent of Wyoming’s wolves are, we have protections in place for wolves Wyoming’s plan is focused on maintaining a recovered population of wolves in the trophy game area,” he says (Jackson Hole Star-Tribune).

The Casper Star-Tribune points out a fact that will make it hard to paint the state authorities as uninterested in wolf-welfare:

A federal wildlife official who helped direct the reintroduction of gray wolves in Wyoming has accepted a new position coordinating the state of Wyoming’s wolf program.

Image: USFWS