Washington, DC – On Friday, September 13, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn a district court’s ruling that added gray wolves outside the northern Rocky Mountains to the endangered species list more than two years ago.
The February 2022 relisting of the species was the result of a lawsuit filed by wolf protectionist groups and followed the 2020 federal delisting of the species.
Several parties then appealed the district court’s order to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The US government joined the appeal in April 2022.
According to a recent motion filed by the USFWS, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California “identified several alleged errors in the USFWS’s scientific determination that listed gray wolves are no longer threatened.”
However, according to the USFWS guidelines: “The policy of removing gray wolves from the list of endangered and threatened species should be maintained. The gray wolf is one of the greatest successes of the Endangered Species Act; has made remarkable improvements and is now flourishing in the continental United States in two huge, developing metapopulations that are also associated with huge wolf populations in Canada.
“The district court’s decision alleging (USFWS’s) extensive recovery analysis fundamentally misunderstands the ESA, the relevant science, and the role of the review court….”
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The case files show that in Minnesota, under ESA protection, wolves have expanded their range by almost 300%, with populations ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 wolves since the early 2000s.
“As Minnesota’s wolf population grew, dispersed wolves colonized and established packs in Wisconsin and Michigan, and these populations reproduced and flourished,” the brief reads. “In total, over 4,000 wolves regularly live in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. These wolves are associated with approximately 12,000 to 14,000 wolves in Canada.”
In April, the United States House of Representatives adopted a resolution regarding remove ESA protection against gray wolves in the lower 48 states.
Minnesota Congressman Pete Stauber called last week’s action by the agency “the right step” toward restoring the delisting of wolves in Minnesota and neighboring states Wisconsin and Michigan, where gray wolf populations exist.
“I am now calling on the Walz-Flanagan administration to direct the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to conduct an annual wolf hunt to cull our out-of-control wolf population, which is the largest of any state in the Lower 48,” Stauber said. in a statement.
Minnesota’s wolf population is estimated to number about 2,700 animals.
According to a statement from the Center for Biological Diversity, which has joined previous lawsuits to maintain federal protections for wolves, the USFWS action provides “a full defense of the agency’s 2020 decisions set aside in 2022. Wolves have not recovered in the immense majority of their historic range, and handing over management to the states will undoubtedly end in bloodshed.”
Defenders of Wildlife, a plaintiff in the lawsuit that halted the 2020 delisting, last week criticized the USFWS’s actions: “Delisting at this point would put us on a backward trajectory, putting the species at risk before its full recovery,” according to statements by Ellen Richmond, senior attorney for the group.
Some of the defenses presented by the USFWS in its brief include:
• The district court’s decision “is based on the erroneous belief that the ESA requires (USFWS) to protect individual members of a healthy species and to restore that species throughout its historic range.”
• Moreover, “The district court ruled that (USFWS) erred by failing to consider threats to wolves in areas of the United States where wolf populations no longer exist.
“However, as a practical matter, (USFWS) cannot assess the threat that humans pose to wolves in places where wolves do not occur. Additionally, this type of analysis would only be meaningful if ESA required the (USFWS) to reinstate every listed species in every location where it has historically occurred. However, the (federal) statute does not impose such an obligation.”
• The district court also erred in finding that the USFWS failed to consider the adequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms to protect wolves after their delisting. The court agreed with the USFWS’s conclusion that state regulatory mechanisms would protect wolves after they were delisted when wolf management returned to the states.
“However, the court found that (USFWS) should have said more about federal regulatory mechanisms, including that some land use plans lack specific guidance regarding wolves. However, under the ESA, the USFWS is only required to examine the regulatory mechanisms that will remain in place after the species is delisted and determine whether those mechanisms will be insufficient to protect the species. Contrary to the district court’s suggestion, the (USFWS) does not have to find that these mechanisms are the best or most protective.”
• “The Court’s conclusion also misunderstands the science of species vulnerability. All species are affected to some extent by threats such as disease, predation and human-caused mortality. So let’s pay attention to the most vulnerable people species always leads to the conclusion that these people are at risk. This does not mean, however, that every species is at risk of extinction throughout all or much of its range now or in the foreseeable future.
“(ESA) is not intended to protect individual members of a species that is not threatened.”
Another suit
The document filed by the USFWS comes right after another lawsuit involving wolves, the one from the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, submitted on September 9.
The lawsuit was announced in a press release: Today… The Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to compel the agency to issue motions on two petitions demanding the gray wolf be delisted and listed in the list below As we read in the announcement, the Endangered Species Act.
“Today we are making good on our promise to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service for its failure to timely respond to our petitions as required by the ESA,” said Michael Jean, litigation counsel at the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation. “Not surprisingly, the agency has repeatedly asked us to refrain from filing a lawsuit. “But we will never refrain from holding agencies accountable for their statutory responsibilities for the scientific management of wildlife.”
According to the release, in June 2023, SAF, along with the Michigan Bear Hunters Association, the Upper Peninsula Houndsmen Association and the Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, submitted two petitions to the USFWS demanding that the agency remove gray wolves from the western Great Lakes and recognize west coast wolves considered endangered. “The agency ignored these petitions for over a year, and on July 2, 2024, we notified FWS that we intended to sue the agency for its failure,” the release said.
The first petition asks the USFWS to recognize and delist wolves in the Western Great Lakes states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota (including areas in neighboring states), the release states. The second petition asks the USFWS to list wolves on the West Coast – wolves in western Washington, western Oregon and California – from endangered to threatened.
“ESA is crystal clear in the petition process: FWS must issue initial 90-day submissions on our petitions and make a final decision within one year,” Torin Miller, deputy general counsel for litigation at the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, said in the release. “FWS has done neither, and we are happy to remind them that the provisions of the ESA are not optional.”
