Environmental and animal-welfare groups sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday, seeking federal protection for wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Montana, responds to Fish and Wildlife rejecting in February a petition to list wolves the Northern Rocky Mountains as an endangered or a threaten species.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Humane Society of the United States and its affiliate, the Humane Society Legislative Fund, filed the lawsuit.

Fish and Wildlife’s decision violated the Endangered Species Act, the lawsuit claims. There are too few gray wolves in too few places to turn wolf management over to states, the groups argue.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is thumbing its nose at the Endangered Species Act and letting wolf-hating states sabotage decades of recovery efforts,” the center’s carnivore conservation director Collette Adkins said.

Fish and Wildlife declined to comment on the suit.

Science in dispute

The lawsuit is a renewed attempt by environmental groups to overcome Fish and Wildlife’s stance that wolves in the Northern Rockies are abundant and flourishing.

The agency recently concluded that even under the worst-case scenario, a heavy toll by hunting and disease, there will be more than 900 wolves in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming in 100 years.

The agency also anticipates more wolves in the future in California, Colorado, Western Oregon, Western Washington and possibly other states, where wolves are federally protected.

Fish and Wildlife reintroduced wolves into central Idaho in 1995 with the goal of having 100 wolves. Idaho now has an estimated 1,300 wolves.

The environmental groups dispute Fish and Wildlife’s scientific work and decry Idaho’s plan to gradually reduce the wolf population to “just 500 wolves.”

Groups allege harm

To establish standing to sue, the groups say if the decision holds, their members likely will see fewer wolves, including outside the Rocky Mountains, and as result will suffer concrete injuries.

The lawsuit gives several examples, such as California wildlife photographer Joshua Able. “He continuously searches his property for wolves and their signs, like scat,” the lawsuit reads.

Center for Biological Diversity endangered species director Noah Greenwald plans to hike and bike in northeastern Oregon this summer and hopes to view wolves, according to the lawsuit.

Colorado resident Brett Henderson explores public lands, but has never seen a wolf. He will backpack in the summer or fall in Colorado “with the specific hopes of seeing or hearing gray wolves,” the suit states.

If wolves are not federally protected, their members also may see wolves trapped, injured or killed, according to the organizations.

There is “ample evidence that anti-wolf hostility drives management decisions in Idaho and Montana,” the lawsuit claims.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game last year passed a six-year plan to gradually reduce the state’s wolf population from about 1,300 to 500.

The Idaho management plan seeks to balance wolf recovery with protecting livestock and game animals, such as elk and moose, state officials said.

The lawsuit has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen.