“The facts are clear and indisputable—the gray wolf no longer meets the definition of a threatened or endangered species,” David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, said in an emailed statement. “Today the wolf is thriving on its vast range, and it is reasonable to conclude it will continue to do so in the future.”

Cattle ranchers believe wolves to be a threat to their livelihood and a history of hunting and poisoning wolves has devastated populations, bringing the wolf to near extinction. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 helped reestablish wolf populations by providing legal protection from the unregulated killing of gray wolves by humans.

The animals have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since the 1970s, and their populations have grown in the Great Lakes region through natural expansion and recolonization from Canada; the same is true for the Northern Rockies, though wolves were also reintroduced to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s.

During the early 1900s, predator-control programs resulted in the elimination of wolves throughout most of the conterminous United States, with the exception of northeast Minnesota. Gray wolves were originally listed under the Endangered Species Act as subspecies or as regional populations of subspecies in the contiguous United States and Mexico.