Trump’s signs order allowing ranchers to kill wolves to protect herds

President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the Interior Department to assess whether gray wolves should lose their endangered-species protections as part of his administration’s efforts to address livestock depletion and bring down domestic beef prices.

The president also ordered the Interior and Agriculture departments to allow ranchers to kill these animals, if necessary, to protect their herds.

“They’re destroying these businesses. You watch them go right through your herd, and they’re violent. It’s a violent situation,” Trump said during the Oval Office signing ceremony, flanked by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and ranchers.

“The problem is, because they’re on the endangered species list, they can’t shoot them,” Rollins said. “They have to sit and watch them destroy their herd.”

The gray wolf was first categorized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) as an endangered species in 1967 due to hunting and other human activities.

Following species repopulation, the FWS under Trump’s first administration in 2020 listed a final rule removing the animal from the endangered species list for the lower 48 U.S. states. This decision was later reversed by a federal judge after wildlife advocates sued to restore these protections.

House Republicans passed a bill last December to reinstate the FWS’s 2020 final rule and strip the gray wolf from the endangerment list again. The legislation is still under consideration in the Senate.

Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany (R), who led this legislative effort in the House, commended the president’s decision in a Friday social media post .

“The gray wolf has recovered,” he wrote. “Farmers are dealing with livestock depredations, families are losing pets, and wolves are showing up closer to homes

“Wisconsin knows how to successfully manage its wildlife,” Tiffany continued. “It’s time to let states responsibly manage their wolf populations.”

Sara Amundson, the president of the Humane World Action Fund, which has long opposed the wolf’s delisting, said in a statement that the move will result in “untold death and cruelty for these animals.”

“Gray wolves should not have to take the fall for an administration whose reckless tariff policies have made life unnecessarily hard for American ranchers,” Amundson said.

This move follows the Trump administration’s controversial decision to remove higher tariffs from imported beef products to help bring down grocery store costs for Americans.

The president announced Friday that this relief would apply to imported beef from countries like Argentina and Brazil — a move that has drawn pushback from cattle ranchers and some GOP lawmakers.

“We’re doing it in a very limited fashion because our ranchers can handle it,” Trump said on Friday. “But our ranchers really needed a little bit of help, and our ranchers want the prices to be down too.”