U.S. gray wolves once again protected as an endangered species thanks to court ruling

A fed­er­al judge, revers­ing a Trump admin­is­tra­tion deci­sion, has restored pro­tec­tion of the gray wolf (“can­is lupus”) under the Endan­gered Species Act over much of the low­er forty-eight states includ­ing Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon and California.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Jef­frey Lee ruled that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice delist­ed the wolf based on analy­sis of just two core wolf pop­u­la­tions and failed to pro­vide a rea­son­able inter­pre­ta­tion of the “sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of its range” standard.”

The judge’s rul­ing pro­tects wolves in the Great Lakes Region, West Coast states and the South­ern Rockies.

It does not apply to Ida­ho, Mon­tana and Wyoming, where state offi­cials have enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly encour­aged the “culling” of wolf populations.

After removal of wolves from the Endan­gered Species list, con­tro­ver­sy revolved over such hap­pen­ings as a “cull” in Wis­con­sin last year in which 200 wolves were killed in less than 60 hours. The state had set a quo­ta of 119 kills.

Wolves are admit­ted­ly sav­age hunters, but sav­agery has often applied to two-legged crea­tures that hunt them. A fam­i­ly of Methow Val­ley ranch­ers was con­vict­ed of killing wolves and then try­ing to ship bloody pelts to an address in Alber­ta. Near­ly twen­ty wolves have been killed this sea­son when they wan­dered out­side bound­aries of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park.

Vis­i­tors to Denali Nation­al Park in Alas­ka have long watched wolves in the Tok­lat Val­ley along the park road. But there is a dent in the park’s bound­ary, north of the road, down which hunters have trav­eled and slaugh­tered Tok­lat wolves.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice has under­tak­en a study of low­er forty-eight wolves – cen­tered in states not cov­ered by Judge Lee’s rul­ing – because “increased human caused mor­tal­i­ty in Ida­ho and Mon­tana may pose a threat to wolves in those states.”

Hunt­ing groups have decried Lee’s rul­ing as that of “an activist judge”. He was nom­i­nat­ed to the fed­er­al bench by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush in 2002.

Kyle Weaver, CEO of the Rocky Moun­tain Elk Foun­da­tion, has claimed the wolf pop­u­la­tion across Amer­i­ca is “sta­ble and growing.”

Not so, argued such envi­ron­men­tal groups as Earth­jus­tice, the Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty, Defend­ers of Wildlife and the Humane Society.

Suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice, they argued in par­tic­u­lar that recov­ery of “West Coast wolves” would be hin­dered by delisting.

“I’m relieved that the court set things right but sad­dened that hun­dreds of wolves suf­fered and died under this ille­gal delist­ing rule: It will take years to undo that dam­age to wolf pop­u­la­tions,” said Col­lette Adkins of the Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diversity.

Wolves were large­ly exter­mi­nat­ed in the “low­er 48” ear­ly in the 20th Cen­tu­ry, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly elim­i­nat­ed even in Yel­low­stone Park. Only about 1,000 remained, main­ly in the Bound­ary Waters region of Min­neso­ta, when pro­tec­tion was extend­ed under the 1973 Endan­gered Species Act.

Wolves began to move south from Cana­da into the Rock­ies and Cas­cades in the 1970’s. “Reen­try points” were the Flat­head Val­ley in Mon­tana and the Skag­it Riv­er in Washington.

The reap­pear­ance of can­is lupus set up con­fronta­tions between some ranch­ers and con­ser­va­tion groups. USFWS hear­ings fea­tured “howl ins” by wolf sup­port­ers, with ranch­ers tes­ti­fy­ing to the bru­tal deaths of their sheep. “Wolves eat sheep,” famed con­ser­va­tion writer Ed Abbey wrote in praise of can­is lupus..

The ear­li­est wolf return to Wash­ing­ton was the sight­ing of a wolf saun­ter­ing through a play­ground at the north end of Ross Lake in Cana­da. A den was sub­se­quent­ly dis­cov­ered on slopes of Hozomeen Moun­tain, just south of the bor­der. The repop­u­la­tion has led to packs in the Chelan-Saw­tooth Wilder­ness Area, and in the west fork-Tean­away Riv­er north of Cle Elum.

The pro­tec­tion of wolves in Wash­ing­ton has been split by a high­way. West of U.S. 97, which runs north-south through Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, wolves are cov­ered under the Endan­gered Species Act. Until Judge Lee’s rul­ing, how­ev­er, the state had juris­dic­tion east of the high­way. State hunters have exter­mi­nat­ed wolf packs in response to ranch­ers in north­east Washington’s Fer­ry County.

Wolf recov­ery was con­tro­ver­sial even in Yel­low­stone Park. After Repub­li­cans recap­tured con­trol of Con­gress in 1994, the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion wor­ried that rein­tro­duc­tion of can­is lupus would be blocked by leg­is­la­tion. U.S. Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary Bruce Bab­bitt helped set loose 31 ani­mals in the nation­al park.

The wolves are since cred­it­ed with a big role in restor­ing the Yel­low­stone Ecosys­tem, con­trol­ling ungu­late pop­u­la­tions, in turn restor­ing such veg­e­ta­tion as juniper trees over­grazed by elk.

Vis­i­tors in the north­east cor­ner of the park, equipped with binoc­u­lars, could watch wolves hunt from the trail behind Soda Butte.