Biden administration seeks to remove gray wolf protections in Lower 48

The Biden administration on Friday asked a federal appeals court to reinstate a rule passed under the Trump administration to remove Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the Lower 48 states which, if successful, would put the animals under state management like is currently the case in Montana and surrounding states.

On behalf of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice filed the 87-page appeal of a California district court’s 2022 decision that blocked the Trump-era rule and kept existing listing regulations in place. The district court’s decision kept wolves in Minnesota a threatened species, an endangered species in 44 states, and a delisted population in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington and north-central Utah.

The new appeal to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the district court incorrectly interpreted the Endangered Species Act, which the government contends is only meant to ensure species are not in danger of going extinct, not to restore species to their full historical range.

But the filing has irked wolf conservation groups that have long fought in court for enhanced protections for various groups of gray wolves or the entire Lower 48 population and believe that handing all wolves over to state management will reverse decades of recovery.

“At its core, this appeal is about whether the purpose of the ESA is to recover endangered and threatened species to the point where they are no longer in danger of extinction, or whether it goes beyond that objective to require that a species be restored to its historical range before delisting,” the government’s appeal brief says. “The ESA is clear: its goal is to prevent extinction, not to restore species to their pre-western settlement numbers and range.”

Susan Holmes, the executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition, called the filing “bewildering” and said if the circuit court sides with the government, the group believes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could “abandon” its efforts to create a wolf recovery plan it agreed to as part of a settlement announced in February involving another wolf Endangered Species Act court case.

“This faulty interpretation of the Endangered Species Act would halt wolf recovery in its tracks,” Holmes said in a statement. “We urge the Service to continue gray wolf recovery efforts and we remain committed to working with them on a vision for recovery.”

The government argues in its appeal that the court substituted its own judgment for the scientific analysis done by the Fish and Wildlife Service that led to the decision to delist gray wolves. The agency says it analyzed gray wolf populations in three different configurations and found that none of those configurations warranted listing them as an endangered or threatened species.

“The gray wolf is one of the ESA’s biggest success stories: it has made a remarkable recovery and now thrives in the continental United States in two large, expanding metapopulations that are also connected to large populations of wolves in Canada,” the filing says. “The district court’s decision faulting the Service’s extensive recovery analysis fundamentally misunderstands the ESA, the relevant science, and the role of a reviewing court under the (Administrative Procedure Act).”

The government also argues the district court incorrectly found the Fish and Wildlife Service erred when it did not consider threats to wolves in areas of the U.S. where they no longer exist. It said the court wrongly found the agency had not considered all state and federal regulatory mechanisms surrounding wolf management when it moved to delist wolves in the Lower 48.

“It makes no sense to require the Service to directly analyze the threat humans pose to wolves in areas where wolves do not exist,” the filing says. “In short, it is pointless to separately consider whether the wolves are ‘in danger of extinction’ in areas where there are no wolves.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service maintains that there are two large and either stable or growing gray wolf populations in the U.S. that number close to 5,000, have high levels of genetic diversity and are resilient to threats because they can quickly reproduce and disperse across wide areas, including interconnecting with an estimated 15,000 wolves in Canada.

The filing says the district court incorrectly weighted threats to individual wolves instead of emphasizing the agency’s analysis of the gray wolf as an entire species.

“Putting a spotlight on the most vulnerable individuals of a species will always lead to the conclusion that those individuals are at risk,” the government wrote. “But that does not mean that every species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range now or into the foreseeable future.”

The filing also notes that if the gray wolf is delisted across the Lower 48, the species would still be considered a “sensitive species” for at least five years and remain under federal regulations. The government argues the district court’s ruling and parameters do not align with direction on the Endangered Species Act that Congress gave to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“The ESA does not require the Service to restore wolves to all areas where they used to be,” the filing says. “Particularly in this case, such a requirement is impossible to meet, given how widespread wolves used to be and the significant development in many of those areas.”

The appellees in the case are several conservation groups, including WildEarth Guardians and the Western Watersheds Project. The National Rifle Association, Safari Club and State of Utah have intervened in the case.

Multiple groups have also sued the federal government over its February decision not to give wolves in the West special protections as a distinct population segment and to re-list wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. One of those groups, the Center for Biological Diversity, this week said the Fish and Wildlife Service’s ongoing attempt to delist gray wolves in the Lower 48 is “dangerous.”

“I’m confident the district court’s reasoned decision that reinstated wolf protections will be upheld,” said the organization’s carnivore conservation program director Collette Adkins. “But I’m frustrated that the agency tasked with wolf recovery is again trying to strip life-saving protections from wolves in places like Wisconsin, where we’d see more dead wolves under state management.”

Blair Miller is a Helena-based reporter for the Daily Montanan, a nonprofit newsroom.