Biden Administration Tries to Eliminate Protections for Gray Wolves

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – The Biden administration on Friday asked an appeals court to revive a Trump-era law that stripped Endangered Species Act protections for American wolves.

If successful, the move will put the poachers under state surveillance across the country and open the door to the resumption of hunting in the Great Lakes region after it was halted two years ago under a court order.

Environmentalists successfully sued when wolf protections were removed in the final days of former President Donald Trump.

Friday’s filing in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the first public move by President Joe Biden’s administration to revive the law. Protection will remain in place pending a court decision.

The court filing follows years of political animosity as wolves have overrun parts of the western United States, sometimes attacking livestock and eating deer, elk and other large game.

Environmental groups want the expansion to continue as wolves still occupy a small part of their historic range.

Attempts to increase or decrease wolf protection began in former President George W. Bush’s first term more than two decades ago and have continued with each subsequent administration.

They once roamed much of North America but were greatly reduced in the mid-1900s in government-sponsored trapping and poisoning campaigns. Gray wolves were given federal protection in 1974.

Every time the US Fish and Wildlife Service declares a recovery, the agency is challenged in court. Wolves in different parts of the United States have lost and gained protection many times in recent years.

“The US Fish and Wildlife Service is committed to a concept of recovery that allows wolves to thrive in the environment while respecting those who work and live in the areas that support them,” agency spokeswoman Vanessa Kauffman said.

The administration is sided in the lawsuit with livestock and hunting groups, the National Rifle Association and Republican-led Utah.

It is opposed by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Humane Society of the United States and other groups.

“When wolves are protected, they do very well, and when they lose protection, that recovery goes backwards,” said Collette Adkins of the Center for Biological Diversity. “We won for good reason in the district court.”

He said he was “saddened” officials were trying to restore the Trump administration.

Wolf recovery efforts have so far been limited to a few regions. Federal officials earlier this year agreed to create the first-ever national bailout plan, by December 2025, under settlements in separate cases.

Kauffman declined to say whether the national plan would still be pursued if the state wins the 9th Circuit case.

But attorneys suggested in Friday’s court filing that the government is willing to continue treating gray wolves, since the animals are no longer endangered.

“The ESA (Endangered Species Act) is clear: its goal is to prevent extinction, not to restore species to their pre-western habitat numbers and ranges,” the US Department of Justice attorneys wrote.

The 2022 ruling that reinstated the protections said wildlife officials had failed to show wolf populations could be sustained in the Midwest and parts of the West. Officials also did not adequately consider threats to wolves outside of those core areas, said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in California.

The Great Lakes region has more than 4,000 wolves. More than 2,000 wolves inhabit the states in the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest.

Congress bypassed the courts in 2011 and stripped federal protections in the northern US Rocky Mountains. Thousands of wolves have since been killed in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

Lawmakers have continued to push for government control in the Western Great Lakes region. When those states briefly gained authority over wolves under the Trump administration, hunters and hunters using dogs hit harvest targets in Wisconsin and killed nearly twice as much as planned.

Michigan and Minnesota have held hunts but not in recent years.

Wolves exist but no public hunting is allowed in states including Washington, Oregon, California and Colorado. They have never been protected in Alaska, where tens of thousands of animals live.

The Biden administration last year rejected requests from conservation groups to restore protections for gray wolves in the northern Rockies. That decision has also been challenged.

State legislators in the area, which includes Yellowstone National Park and large wilderness areas, are interested in eliminating more wolves. But federal officials determined that the hunters were not at risk of extinction under the states’ relaxed hunting laws.

The United States is also home to a small population of the endangered red wolf in the mid-Atlantic region and the Southwest Mexican wolf. All those people are protected as they are in danger.