The infamous Federal Endangered Species Act is not that protective it seems, and environmentalists have decided to do something about it. The controversy that surrounds the gray wolf population prompted animal rights activists to react and file a complaint on Monday against the government’s decision to remove it from the endangered species list and leave it to the mercy of hunters.

In February 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took the gray wolf off the endangered species list after their investigation concluded not only that the wolf population is fully recovered, but that there are more specimens than predicted and fewer problems.

However, environmentalists disagree: "We're very concerned that absent an injunction, hundreds of wolves could be killed under existing state management plans," attorney Jason Rylander with Defenders of Wildlife, one of twelve groups that filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Missoula, told the Associated Press.

Indeed, taking the wolves off the list would be ideal under a solid management plan, and it’s hard to believe the wolves are out of danger, but if they are, a plan to protect irrational killing should also be put in place.

Twelve environmentalist groups have already asked for the protection of the gray wolf to be restored in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. The three states took over the fate of the wolves after livestock owners complained about wolf attacks, which made the authorities take them off the endangered species list and give “license to kill.”

This resulted as expected in waves of killings, and the decision is even harder to understand since the wolf has disappeared from almost all of the U.S. states for three decades now. The plan is to stop the killings when the population will drop under a certain level, but is it normal to wait for the critical point to be reached to protect them again?