Billings, Mont. – A judge restored federal protections for gray wolves across much of the U.S. on Thursday after they were removed in the waning days of the Trump administration.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to show wolf populations could be sustained in the Midwest and portions of the West without protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Wildlife advocates had sued the agency last year, saying state-sponsored hunting threatened to reverse the gray wolf’s recovery over the past several decades. The ruling does not directly impact wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and portions of several adjacent states that remain under state jurisdiction after protections in the region were lifted by Congress last decade.

Full story here.