The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to strip gray wolves in the lower 48 states of protections under the Endangered Species Act.

The bill written by Rep. Lauren Bobert, R-Colo., and entitled the Pet and Livestock Protection Act (H.R. 845) has 37 co-sponsors, including Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo. The voted passed 211-204, largely down party lines.

The bill would delist gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act and eliminate the ability to challenge the delisting in court due to a clause in the bill barring the decision from judicial review. If passed by the Senate and signed by the president, the law will be enacted no later than 60 days after being signed.

Five Democrats voted for the bill and four Republicans voted against it. Eighteen representatives did not vote on the bill, including eight Democrats and 10 Republicans.

Rep. Harriett Hageman, R-Wyo., Wyoming’s only representative and a co-sponsor of the legislation, voted in favor of the bill. Efforts seeking a response from Hageman went unanswered.

In a letter to Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Wis., Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Republican leaders, signed by Hageman, said it is time to give states a chance to manage the species within their borders.

“We believe that state governments are fully qualified to responsibly manage gray wolf populations and are better able to meet the needs of local communities, ranchers, livestock and wildlife populations. Delisting the gray wolf under the ESA will allow state wildlife officials to manage wolf populations more effectively — as we have seen is possible in states such as Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan,” the letter reads.

Hageman also called for delisting gray wolves in a speech last year referred to as the “Trust the Science” speech in front of Congress. In the speech she declared northern Minnesota as a dead zone due to wolves wiping out game animals in their habitat. She also claimed there were more than 6,000 wolves in the range, however, official individual counts range between 2,500 and 3,000 wolves in 631 packs across the northeastern part of the state.

The most recent data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows the plan would remove Endangered Species Act protection from more than 4,500 wolves in the western Great Lakes region, as well as nearly 2,800 wolves in seven western states.

Critics of the bill say scientific evidence does not support the delisting, as it does not show that gray wolves have fully recovered under ESA protections. Gray wolves in the northern Rockies have already been delisted and Wyoming has held conservative hunting seasons in the trophy zone just outside the border to Yellowstone National Park. In the predator zone (outside suitable habitat for the species as decided by the state) wolves can be taken without licenses or limits, but all kills must be reported to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department within 24 hours of harvest.

In a response to the vote by the animal rights activists group Humane World for Animals, the organization said the yea votes on the “laughably” named Pet and Livestock Protection Act “defy both science and widely held public values on the subject of wolf protection, and constitutes one of the most dangerous threats to wolves’ survival in recent years.”

“This is the most dangerous threat to wolves we have seen in years. It is a reckless and deeply unpopular move that ignores science, the courts and the values held by millions of Americans who overwhelmingly support protecting these iconic animals,” said Kitty Block, president and CEO of Humane World for Animals. “Wolves are still missing from most of their historic range and remain vulnerable to the same over-killing that drove them to the brink of extinction in the first place. They deserve a chance to recover, not to have their pack families torn apart for trophies and bragging rights by hunters.”

In response to the vote, Bradley Williams, Sierra Club’s Deputy Legislative Director for Wildlife and Lands Protection, said anti-wildlife lawmakers are once again attacking the Endangered Species Act, this time by targeting gray wolves.

“The science is clear: Wolves still need federal protections to recover across their historic range, and stripping them now would put this iconic species at risk. Blocking judicial review only adds to the recklessness of this bill. We have seen firsthand how vital wolves are to ecosystems like Yellowstone National Park, which suffered greatly from the absence of wolves before their reintroduction in 1995. For more than 50 years, the American people have overwhelmingly supported the Endangered Species Act and want to see it upheld, not undermined. We urge the Senate to reject this bill,” Williams said.