President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to kick off the process of stripping endangered species protections from gray wolves and a subspecies, the Mexican wolf.

The order instructs Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to determine whether the animals have met the recovery criteria for removing protections and, if so, to begin the process of delisting them from the Endangered Species Act.

Gray wolves are currently protected under the act in much of the United States. Mexican wolves, whose current U.S. range is limited to Arizona and New Mexico, are also federally protected. Neither has been delisted yet, making killing them in most cases a federal crime.

Trump nevertheless told a group of ranchers at the Oval Office they could “shoot ’em as of today.”

President Donald Trump encouraged ranchers to "shoot' gray wolves on Friday, despite it still being federally illegal.

gnagel via Getty Images and Bloomberg via Getty images

The president had been discussing wolves with the ranchers, who described them as a threat to their cattle herds and dogs.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins added, “And so the problem is, because they’re on the endangered species list, they can’t shoot them. They have to sit and watch them destroy their herd.”

“But you can shoot ’em as of today,” Trump responded.

Rollins quickly cut in, “Well—” as the room laughed.

“Secretary Burgum has to do a project first,” she continued. “But yes, close.”

Watch Trump’s discussion with Rollins and the ranchers below:

The first Trump administration removed gray wolves from the endangered species list in 2020, but a judge restored federal protections two years later following a lawsuit by environmental groups. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden’s administration attempted to remove protections again, unsuccessfully.

Conservation and animal advocacy groups condemned Trump’s Friday order.

“The war on wolves needs to end, not escalate,” Kitty Block, president and CEO of the nonprofit Humane World for Animals, said in a statement sent to HuffPost.

She continued that “rolling back federal protections now” would “jeopardize decades of recovery and open the door for brutal killing.”