Despite a federal judge’s recent ruling that calls for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider whether gray wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, Idaho’s wolves will remain under state authority, according to Idaho Fish and Game.

This week, Judge Donald W. Molloy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana found that the federal agency used flawed state data in analyzing the threats faced by wolves and wrongly denied ESA protections to gray wolves in the West. 

The ruling was lauded by the coalition of environmental groups that had sued to challenge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2024 finding that gray wolves in the West don’t “meet the definition of an endangered or threatened species” under the ESA. 

Idaho Fish and Game weighed in Thursday. 

“We’re extremely disappointed with the decision considering Idaho has managed a wolf population above federal recovery goals for decades and sustained more-than-adequate wolf populations since Congress removed them from Endangered Species Act protection in 2011,” Jim Fredericks, director of Idaho Fish and Game, said in a news release Thursday. 

Idaho’s most recent wolf population estimate from spring 2024 is 1,235 wolves, which Idaho Fish and Game described as “well above the recovery goal of 150 wolves and more than twice the number identified in the federal delisting rule written in 2009.” 

IDFG is working to reduce the state’s wolf population over six years to a yearly average of about 500 wolves, according to the Idaho Gray Wolf Management Plant 2023-2028. 

“We monitor wolves and continue to manage them in accordance with our management plan to ensure the population exceeds federal recovery criteria while staying within the ecological and social carrying capacity of Idaho,” Fredericks said. “Wolves are polarizing, and some people simply don’t believe wolves should be hunted or trapped at all. Where we have sustainable populations, we believe those decisions should be left to the states and not dictated by the federal government or the courts.” 

According to Fish and Game, Idaho could eventually be affected by the judge’s ruling because the lawsuit involves the ESA status of wolves across the West, where some wolves are federally protected and others are not, depending on the state where they’re located.