It's been a bad couple of months for the gray wolf in the Northern Rockies area, and now a court battle begins.

Though prolific enough in much of the world and hardly considered endangered in most areas, US Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced gray wolves into the Yellowstone area in 1995-96. Within 10 years, the program had seen the wolf's Northern Rockies population burgeon to 1,200-1,500 in the area.

US Fish and Wildlife were confident enough in the animal's success that the gray wolf was taken off the federal government's endangered species list on March 28. Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett proclaimed the program "a conservation success story" at that time.

Except Scarlett seems to have forgotten the human factor.

On March 28, Idaho introduced a new that allowed for the killing of wolves without a hunting permit; most of Wyoming now has a "predator law" in effect, also essentially granting legal immunity to those protecting property and livestock from the wolves.

The results? In the first week after removal, "at least 10 wolves were immediately shot and killed in Wyoming during the first week after the de-listing. One of the first wolves killed was a male wolf known as 253M, a member of Yellowstone's Druid Peak wolf pack who had been quite popular with the public."

This week, reckoning that "at least 37 wolves have been killed in the Northern Rockies - over two percent of the total wolf population," environmental legal concern Earthjustice has filed suit on behalf of 12 organizations seeking to re-list the wolf.

The lawsuit claims the wolf's chances at survival now suffer from "biased, inadequate state management plans, as well as by the lack of connections between largely isolated state wolf populations."

Humane Society of the United States senior VP John Grandy took the opportunity of announcing the lawsuit to update everyone's scorecard: "Idaho wins the prize for wanting to kill the most wolves. Wyoming wins for the most blatant hostility toward wolves enshrined in state law. And Montana wears the crown for killing the most wolves in 8 of the last 10 years, despite having the smallest wolf population of all three states." The Humane Society is one of the twelve in on the lawsuit.

Also in is the Sierra Club, whose Melanie Stein sums it up sadly with "Since delisting, our worst fears are coming true."