A Montana-based federal judge sounded a tad skeptical about some of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s gray-wolf decision-making Wednesday in a briskly paced and unusually long court hearing.
The live-streamed oral argument held in Missoula’s federal courthouse zeroed in on whether the agency must reconsider the wolf’s Endangered Species Act status. Several times, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy pushed back against the government’s assertions.
“There are some issues that are troubling to me,” Molloy told a Justice Department lawyer after he frequently interrupted her initial argument.
The FWS has tried to remove the gray wolf from the list of ESA-protected species, but a federal judge in California stopped the nationwide delisting in a separate case that’s now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
