Judge faults feds for lack of nationwide plan to save gray wolf

WASHINGTON (CN) — Agreeing with a conservation group, a federal judge found Friday that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to develop a nationwide recovery plan under the Endangered Species Act for the gray wolf.

“FWS has only ever created recovery plans for different subspecies of gray wolves,” U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said in his 17-page opinion Friday.

The agency’s recovery plan for the gray wolf was one developed in 1992 and was last updated more than a decade ago in 2012. The plan has separate treatments for the eastern timber wolf in Minnesota, the delisted gray wolf population in the northern Rocky Mountains and the Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest.

Acknowledging that the agency has targeted recovery plans for these three subspecies, Friedrich agreed with the Center for Biological Diversity that the agency’s wolf-recovery planning — focused on populations of the species in three separate geographic areas — failed to create a comprehensive plan that offers a big-picture look at wolf population recovery across the country.

“None of the plans the agency has produced ‘incorporate[s]’ ‘a description of such site-specific management actions as may be necessary to achieve the plan’s goal for the conservation and survival of the species’,” the D.C. federal judge continued.

As part of the suit, the center asked the service to immediately develop and implement a nationwide recovery plan for the gray wolf. However, the judge clarified Friday his opinion does not necessarily indicate that if the suit is successful, but that the agency must choose particular means for achieving conservation for gray wolves nationwide.

“Rather, this opinion holds only that CBD’s complaint plausibly alleges … that it failed to produce a plan with ‘the required plan components,’” Friedrich said, using an acronym for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Despite the gray wolf population’s low numbers, the service has routinely attempted to remove protection from the species, most recently in 2020 under former President Donald Trump. A federal court ruling in February 2022 later restored protections for wolves in the lower 48 states outside of the Rocky Mountains. 

The opinion Friday shot down the center’s additional argument that the delisting under Trump did not qualify as a review, and that the agency needed to revisit the wolves’ Endangered Species Act status promptly rather than in 2025 per the usual five-year review cycle, as a result.

“Because the agency conducted such a review, that claim will be dismissed,” the judge wrote.

Accusing the government of failing to comply with the Endangered Species Act, the center brought this suit in November 2022 to demand the nationwide recovery plan for the gray wolf.

Before a government-sponsored predator killing curbed their numbers to approximately 7,000, a population that lives almost entirely in northeastern Minnesota, the gray wolf had a population of about 2 million and territory that spanned much of the United States.

Still, the group is hopeful the case will lead to more action to save the wolves.

“This straight-forward ruling signals safer trails ahead for the exceedingly vulnerable wolves in western Oregon and Washington, Colorado and the Northeast,” Sophia Ressler, a staff attorney at the Center, said in response to the opinion Friday.

“I hope this finally ends the service’s decades-long gerrymandering of wolf ranges in its attempt to prematurely remove wolves from the endangered species list,” Ressler added of the suit. “The agency must live up to the reality of what science and the law demand.”

The species now exists only at about 1% of its historical numbers, a percentage the center has blamed on the absence of a sufficient recovery plan.

Wildlife advocates say gray wolves still face serious threats to their survival, especially as states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan authorize new trophy hunting seasons. During a Wisconsin wolf-hunting season in February 2021, at least 218 gray wolves were killed in a 48-hour span, about 100 more than the legal limit.

The center also faulted the service’s current plans for focusing intently on Minnesota, without acknowledging actions that could be taken in other areas where wolf populations could thrive. The suit lists the West Coast, southern Rocky Mountains and northeastern United States as examples of other potential habitats. 

Other defendants include Deb Haaland, in her role as the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Martha Williams, as head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

A spokesperson from the Department of the Interior declined to comment on the opinion Friday.

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