Red wolves miss out on increased protections as judge upholds feds' classification

RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — A federal judge found in favor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Tuesday in a suit over whether the government did enough to protect the red wolf population.

In an order for summary judgment, U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II confirmed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was not “arbitrary and capricious” in denying a petition to increase protections for critically endangered red wolves.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit in October 2023 after the government denied its petition to reclassify red wolves — which had been reintroduced to the wild — as an essential population. It also wanted the government to remove a rule allowing the wolves to be killed on private property if they could not be captured.

The center’s petition was filed in 2016, and sat before the service for several years. While it was pending, in a separate case, U.S. District Judge Terrance W. Boyle permanently enjoined the government from killing the red wolves without first showing the animals are a threat to people, livestock or pets.

The Fish and Wildlife Service denied the center’s petition in January 2023. The service said it would not reevaluate the status of the species when it wasn’t preparing to release more captive wolves in a new area, and the rule allowing wolves to be killed “has effectively already been removed."

“The service’s decision not to redesignate the experimental red wolf population as ‘essential’ was reached through ‘reasoned decisionmaking,’" Myers, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote.

The government isn’t required to redetermine the wolves’ designation unless it plans to release more captive animals into a new area, he said, calling the decision justifiable.

The wolves’ nonessential designation means they have fewer habitat protections compared to “essential” species. The government estimates there are 27 or 28 wild red wolves, with a captive population of 280 wolves.

Captive wolves lack the same skills as wild wolves, which are crucial to the survival of the species, Center for Biological Diversity attorney Perrin de Jong argued in a hearing for summary judgment. The wolves are hard-hit by human interference in their habitat, with car collisions and gunshots their leading causes of death, de Jong said.

The service declared the wolves had nonessential status in 1986 because there was a stable captive population. Despite decades having passed, the government isn’t required to update that determination, Myers said.

“Because the service has not authorized the release of a new population of red wolves outside of its current range, its obligation to make an essentiality determination was not triggered, and it was permissible for it to rely on the rationale articulated in its 1986 designation,” he said.

“To be clear, this order does not make a finding as to whether the red wolves in eastern North Carolina, as it stands today, are essential to the continued survival of the species in the wild. That question is not properly before the court,” Myers wrote. “In this posture, it suffices to find merely that the center’s § 553(e) petition was not the appropriate tool to compel the service to reconsider its decision."

The Fish and Wildlife Service reasonably declined to reclassify the wolves, the defendants argued in their request for summary judgment, and the center is instead attempting to challenge the retired rule allowing the wolves to be killed.

Government attorney Bonnie Ballard told the court in 2025 the service does not want to reclassify the species because doing so would reduce management flexibility.

The only wolf solely native to the U.S., red wolves are one of the most endangered species on Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity argued, after the population began facing intensive predator control programs and habitat alteration.

Collette Adkins, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said: “This disappointing ruling ignores the key question of whether North Carolina’s tiny red wolf population deserves the highest level of protection. Which it absolutely does.

“It’ll allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to keep relying on an absurd 1986 ruling that falsely claims the world’s last wild population of red wolves isn’t essential to the species’ survival in the wild. That decision was wrong then and it’s still wrong now,” she added.

A U.S. Department of the Interior spokesperson said the department is currently reviewing the order.

Red wolves were first designated an endangered species in 1967. In the 1970s, the Fish and Wildlife Service captured red wolves to create a breeding program before releasing an experimental population of red wolves into the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1986. Their population was estimated at 120 wolves in 2012 and has mostly declined since, with the government attempting to increase the population over the last few years.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s current strategy includes introducing captive wolves to the wild and putting foster pups from captive parents into the dens of wild wolves.

North Carolina’s northeastern red wolf population is the species’ only wild population, barring a rumored ghost population in Galveston, Texas, where the first captive population was caught in the 1970s.

The parties argued their motions for a judgment in the case last year before Boyle, who has presided over litigation involving red wolves since the 1990s. Myers, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, was assigned to the case in late 2025.

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