In yet another hateful display of politics overriding science, the Trump administration has followed through on its threat to yank gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protections. On Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) delisted gray wolves, removing federal protection in all lower 48 states, except for a small population of Mexican wolves in the Southwest. Loss of these protections opens the way for states to reclassify wolves as game (trophies) or to give ranchers the right to kill wolves in the name of livestock protection.
Delisting also reduces funding for wolf conservation and leaves all protection to individual states. However, wolves don’t obey state borders. Wolves from Oregon have entered California many times and founded two packs in the state. A subadult male wolf from the extant pack crossed from California into Oregon earlier this month. Wolf reintroduction approval is on the ballot in Colorado next week, but wolves have already introduced themselves, trickling over the border from Wyoming. Even in states that list wolves as endangered, such as California, wolf conservation requires large-scale policies, not a state-by-state approach that is sabotaged by states with hostile anti-wolf policies, such as Idaho.
Conservation groups have criticized the USFWS move as illegal, destructive, dangerous, and unscientific and will press legal challenges during the next 60 days before the Final Delisting Rule takes effect after formal publication in the Federal Register.
Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that the courts have previously supported legal challenges to USFWS failures to meet ESA mandated wolf conservation actions.
Again and again the courts have rejected premature removal of wolf protections. But instead of pursuing further wolf recovery, the Fish and Wildlife Service has just adopted its broadest, most destructive delisting rule yet. The courts recognize, even if the feds don’t, that the Endangered Species Act requires real wolf recovery, including in the southern Rockies and other places with ideal wolf habitat.
Gray wolves in the lower 48 states were in the first set of wildlife species listed under the federal ESA in 1974. The ESA required USFWS to develop a national species recovery plan and implement it until gray wolves are no longer in peril of extinction. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s press release on the delisting explained why the decision is illegal and unscientific. They note, “It is as if the FWS has flipped the definition of recovery on its head. Rather than asking, ‘What would national recovery of this species look like?’ it has asked, ‘What is the absolute bare minimum that we could do that would allow us to wash our hands of this issue?’
The problem is that the FWS never developed a national recovery plan for gray wolves as it should have and as it has been petitioned to do multiple times. Instead the agency focused on recovering three isolated population of wolves: one in the Midwest (or western Great Lakes), one in the Northern Rockies, and one in the Southwest. Once those populations began reaching a certain size, the FWS tried to remove endangered species protections from each of the individual populations separately rather than address the Lower 48 wolf population (i.e., the entire listed entity) as a whole. Doing so has caused legal challenges for the FWS over the years. This most recent proposal is a response to a court finding overturning the agency's latest attempt to delist the midwestern population of wolves.
The crux of the issue here is what does it mean to recover a species? Wolves used to be found across most of the country. We agree that wolves don’t have to be recovered everywhere they used to be found—much of their Lower 48 habitat is now uninhabitable for them. But there is still plenty of suitable habitat left in areas such as the Southern Rockies, parts of California and the Pacific Northwest, and, notably, the Northeast. [...]
In this latest proposal, however, the FWS is arguing that the only thing it needs to do to declare wolves recovered in the rest of the United States (excluding the Northern Rockies and Mexican wolves) is to make sure there is a stable population in Minnesota and one additional population outside of Minnesota (in this case Wisconsin).
Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice attorney, affirmed the need for a legal challenge.
This is no ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment for wolf recovery. Wolves are only starting to get a toehold in places like Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, and wolves need federal protection to explore habitat in the Southern Rockies and the Northeast. This delisting decision is what happens when bad science drives bad policy — and it’s illegal, so we will see them in court.
Based on what has happened in parts of the U.S. where ESA listing has been removed due to claims that particular subpopulation has recovered, thousands of wolves could be killed after the Final Delisting Rule. “Since the 2011 removal of federal wolf protections in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, people have killed an estimated 3,500 wolves.” The only reason wolves have successfully recolonized a fraction of their historic range is because of ESA protections.
Bart Melton, wildlife program director for the National Parks Conservation Association, points out that this action is illegal under the ESA because the gray wolf population has not met the requirements for delisting.
Removing protections for gray wolves amid a global extinction crisis is shortsighted and dangerous to America’s conservation legacy. Rather than working alongside communities to support the return of wolves to parks and surrounding landscapes including Dinosaur National Monument, North Cascades and Lassen National Forest, the administration essentially today said ‘good enough’ and removed Endangered Species Act protections. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal ignores the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, science and common sense.
After the proposal to delist wolves was released in 2019, it was reviewed by a team of five scientists who “found the USFWS misinterpreted some of the science used to make its conclusion, and did not provide an adequate review and analysis of factors relating to persistence of the wolf population.”
John Mellgren, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, said, "On its face, this appears to be politically motivated. While the Trump administration may believe it can disregard science, the law does not support such a stance. We look forward to having a court hear our science-based arguments for why wolves desperately need Endangered Species Act protections to fully recover."
Senior West Coast wolf advocate at Center for Biological Diversity Amaroq Weiss pointed out associated consequences of delisting in a Facebook post and noted that the Center, along with other conservation organizations, will challenge the USFWS action.
Federal wolf delisting has many more consequences than one might realize at first blush. In addition to lost opportunities to fully recover the species, consider this: Lost federal funding for wolf conservation, lost federal funding for helping livestock operators implement nonlethal conflict deterrence measures, and lost ability to prosecute wolf poachers in past cases.
As noted earlier, some states, such as California, list gray wolves as endangered under their state ESA. The federal delisting still harms California wolves by eliminating funding.
Since 2016, California’s wildlife agency has received $1 million in federal funds to help pay for its wolf-monitoring program. That helps fund biologists to monitor the state’s single wolf pack in Lassen and Plumas counties and to track random wolves that wander into the state from time to time from Oregon, Washington and Idaho. The money also goes to programs intended to reduce conflicts between ranchers and wolves.
In addition to putting federal funding at risk, the loss of federal protections greatly hinders the ability of local prosecutors to charge a poacher with felonies, which include hefty fines and possible prison time. Environmentalists warn that may encourage more killing of wolves in California.
Under the California Endangered Species Act, the penalties top out at a year in jail. This is significant since three wolves have died in California under suspicious circumstances in recent years.
Here’s a brief look at what gray wolf recovery looked like in California in 2019, from a Department of Fish and Wildlife trail camera. “Three-month old gray wolf pups investigate their world while their mother, LAS01F, is on a hunting foray 5 miles away. The adults must balance protection of the pups while meeting their nutritional needs, and may be absent for long periods during several mile hunting forays. “
Conservation groups have filed hundreds of legal actions opposing gray wolf policies and other environmental rollbacks of the Trump administration, winning many of them. With only four days until 2020 voting has ended, we all hope to be seeing the last of this administration and this round of environmental abuse. Conservation organizations want to lobby and fight for improved policies rather than fighting to block horrific policy. Our election focus, however, doesn’t eliminate the need for conservation action. Below are two armchair activist actions to take right now and two worthy organizations for your donations. They partner with other organizations to defend the environment from unscientific policies and bad politics.
EARTHJUSTICE CAMPAIGN — WRITE TO YOUR LEGISLATORS: Restore the Endangered Species Act
Fortunately, we have a chance to put a check on the administration and reinstate critical protections. The PAW and FIN Act would reverse the damage and restore the ESA to its full strength. The bill is waiting for a vote in the House of Representatives, which is why we need your help right now. Please join us in writing your congressperson to tell them it’s time to pass the PAW and FIN Act!
You can send a message to your legislators on the Earthjustice action page.
Donate to Earthjustice HERE.
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CENTER for BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY PETITiON: Tell Governors: Now's the Time to Protect Wolves
Please take a moment to tell governors with wolves in their states to do everything in their power to ensure the species' survival and recovery.
The decision to end federal wolf protection means that states will soon manage wolves—so governors play a critical role in the future of wolf families in places like California, Colorado, Utah, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington and the Dakotas.
The last thing these wolves need is a rush of state-sanctioned hunting and trapping seasons. That'll take us right back to the time when wolves were relentlessly killed and harassed—a time when pups weren't safe in their dens and packs were torn apart. SIGN HERE
Donate to the Center HERE.
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For more background on gray wolf recovery in the U.S., what happens without ESA protections, or even why wolves are important, see this press release from Earthjustice. For information about rancher opposition to wolves and efforts to introduce livestock management practices to reduce depredation see my previous story, “California's second wolf pack generates conservation thrill and rancher ire.”