In no surprise to anyone a US court of appeals in Washington DC ruled that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) hadn’t properly accounted for the impacts of partial delisting and of historic range loss to the gray wolf.
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This is the same reasoning as was given for Wyoming which actually won delisting on appeal (different court). From memory the original legality of the ruling was pretty good. The idea is that as the Endangered Species Act now reads a species has to be restored to it’s entire historic range for delisting to occur. The historic range includes every state and every city in the country. Suburbs, megalopolises, everywhere. Of course the reality is that one can’t have wolves roaming the streets of major metro areas and that was never the intent of restoring isolated populations.
When the lower court first made this ruling most wolf researchers reacted with consternation as the ruling ignored the obvious scientific fact that wolves were long since recovered in the places where the intent was to have a wolf population. Wolf numbers in the midwest are in the thousands and there are so many that population estimates are in decline in some places as the canines have over eaten their prey base.
Large portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana are actually unsuitable being composed mostly of cities and suburbs with nothing for wolves to eat other than people and pets. Those are the states or portions of states named in this ruling. Yet until wolves reside there, they are not truly restored, and even then there is still the rest of the country.
Advocates are of course ecstatic, no one has ever accused wolf advocates of being reality based.
Bills introduced to force delisting are often introduced by Democrats for two reasons. Reason one is to demonstrate bipartisan support, and reason number two is because Democrats from areas with high wolf populations want to retain their jobs. There are a couple of bills current right now in both the house and the senate. These Democratic senators and congressmen are not what are commonly considered conservative. I’ve yet to see Al Franken put his name to one but I’ve no doubt where his sentiments lie.
Adding more uncertainty is a strong impetus from this ruling to push forward with endangered species act reforms. Probably a change to rules regarding species such as the wolf that were never endangered in the first place, (IUCN-Gray Wolf), combined with legislative restraints on the cottage industry that has emerged to litigate the government misusing a law designed to protect individuals of modest means, would be an improvement. Many species are really facing real extinction, as in no more, and the millions of dollars wasted by both states and the federal government on charismatic species that has healthy populations, could well be better spent.