Gerrymandering is bad enough when politicians use it to protect their own hides.

But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has tried to use the technique to go after the hides of an endangered species by lessening the protection of gray wolves.

A federal judge in Oregon ruled Tuesday that the Bush administration violated the Endangered Species Act with its moves to combine wolf ranges and reclassify the populations as threatened instead of endangered.

Just as an example: The eastern segment of the wolf habitat runs from the Dakotas all the way to Maine. There are no confirmed wolves in Maine, but efforts to rebuild the population are controversial in many Western states, where ranchers are concerned about their livestock. According to our maps and sense of geography, North Dakota is nowhere near what would traditionally be considered the eastern part of the United States.

Politics overruled biology, and the judge delivered a sharp rebuke to the administration.

The ruling will likely make it harder for the president to undermine other endangered species protections, and provide a needed check to make sure good science is the driving force behind decisions by federal wildlife agencies.