Feds face lawsuit over reversal on wolf recovery plan
Ryan Knappenberger
WASHINGTON (CN) — A conservation group sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Tuesday over its refusal to formulate a national recovery plan for the threatened gray wolf after the agency removed the species from the endangered species list last year.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing the government had ignored a settlement agreement to craft such a plan in an identical 2022 lawsuit and abandoned a pledge to draft one by the end of 2025.
“Repeatedly over the last two decades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has tried to reduce or remove federal protections for gray wolves, with courts nearly universally rejecting these attempts,” the group argues in the 16-page lawsuit. “The agency’s unlawful efforts have relied upon outdated and piecemeal recovery plans that do not address the gray wolf entity.”
The conservation group requested U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Donald Trump appointee, declare the service unlawfully determined that gray wolves would not benefit from a national recovery plan in violation of the Endangered Species Act, declare it failed to provide a reasonable explanation and order the development of a plan.
“Today, gray wolves occupy less than 15 percent of their historical range in the United States, with most recovery progress in areas covered by region-specific recovery plans,” the conservation group argues. “The total population numbers less than 8,000 individuals. While this represents an improvement in the status of the gray wolf since its listing, grave threats remain in both occupied and unoccupied portions of its range, including areas that have never been the focus of any recovery efforts.”
In a statement, senior attorney and director of the center’s Carnivore Conservation program, Collette Adkins, said it was frustrating having to return to court “to force the Trump administration to do its job.”
“Instead of trying to illegally strip wolves of protections once again, the Fish and Wildlife Service must finally follow the law and develop a plan to achieve nationwide wolf recovery,” Adkins said. “Wolves are so important to America’s biodiversity, and they deserve a plan that guides conservation in places where they’re struggling, like the West Coast and southern Rocky Mountains.”
According to the conservation group, there were up to 2 million gray wolves throughout North America before European settlement. The only areas not occupied by the wolves were the driest deserts and the southeastern U.S., occupied by the red wolf.
The wolves play significant roles in their surrounding ecosystems, with studies in Yellowstone National Park showing their presence promotes biodiversity and overall ecological health, the conservation group said.
Throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries, federal agents decimated the gray wolves’ population, leaving less than 1,000 wolves remaining in northeastern Minnesota and Isle Royale, Michigan, in 1967, when the wolves received the first federal protections under the Endangered Species Act’s precursor.
In 1978, the Fish and Wildlife Service initially protected the wolves as four subspecies and developed separate plans for three recovery areas: the Northern Rocky Mountains, the eastern U.S., with a focus on Minnesota, and the Southwest.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, it classified the gray wolf as endangered at the species level in 1978, except for gray wolves in Minnesota, which were classified as threatened. The Northern Rocky Mountains population was delisted in 2011 due to recovery, except for Wyoming, which was delisted in 2017.
The remaining wolf populations were delisted in 2021, a move the conservation group challenged in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where a federal judge in 2022 vacated the delisting and restored the gray wolf’s status as an endangered species.
After the service failed to develop a national recovery plan following that ruling, the conservation group sued again in Washington, resulting in a settlement in which the service agreed to develop a recovery plan by the end of 2025. In February 2024, the service reaffirmed its commitment to creating a national recovery plan.
Under President Trump, the service reversed course in November, finding that “recovery plans would not promote the conservation of the gray wolf 44-state or Minnesota listed entities because listing these entities is no longer appropriate” under the Endangered Species Act.
The service provided no further explanation for its decision to cancel preparation of the national recovery plan.
The Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment on the lawsuit.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the gray wolf population numbers less than 8,000 individuals across the United States.