Washington — On the heels of a deer-hunting season during which northern Minnesota hunters expressed displeasure with the kill and turned their collective ire toward gray wolves’ effects on the whitetail herd, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced a new “engagement” effort scheduled to last until 2026.
The USFWS plan was announced a day before a Dec. 14 news release from the Center for Biological Diversity divulged that under a settlement approved by a District of Columbia federal court, the USFWS “must draft a new recovery plan for gray wolves listed under the Endangered Species Act. The draft plan must be completed within two years unless the agency finds that such a plan will not promote the conservation of the species.”
And in yet another wolf-related twist, Outdoor News, in its Dec. 8 edition, reported the formation of a state group, “Hunters for Hunters,” and its plan to host a series of “wolf predation” meetings across northern Minnesota this month and next.
Meanwhile, at the federal level, lawsuits and appeals continue to swirl around the species that’s classified as federally “threatened” in Minnesota – and endangered in the states of Wisconsin and Michigan.
Some recent background, courtesy of the USFWS: In November of 2020, the USFWS published a final rule delisting wolves in the lower 48 United States. That rule took effect in January 2021.
About a year later, in February 2022, the delisting rule was vacated by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Thus, wolves outside of the Northern Rocky Mountain region once again were protected under the Endangered Species Act.
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According to the USFWS, “Multiple parties appealed the district court’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the parties have been engaged in mediation.”
In January 2023, the circuit mediator issued an order temporarily staying the appeals for administrative purposes until Feb. 2, 2024. The USFWS announced at that time that it would “update the status review for the gray wolf throughout the lower 48 United States and commence a stakeholder engagement effort.”
In that statement, too, the USFWS said that its intent was to “submit to the Office of the Federal Register a proposed rule concerning the listing status of gray wolves …”
The federal engagement process now under way

On Dec. 13, a USFWS press release announced that the agency had “launched a new effort to create and foster a national dialogue around how communities can live with gray wolves to include conflict prevention, long-term stability, and community security,” adding that, “These discussions will include those who live with wolves and those who do not but want to know they have a place on the landscape.”
The release also states the agency had determined an outside contractor would lead the effort, the timeline of which began in September and whose end date is 2026.
“The (USFWS) believes that the conversation is best led by an outside party and not by the (USFWS),” the release says. “Understanding that a fair, inclusive, and balanced public engagement requires a neutral and widely trusted convenor to design and guide the process, the (USFWS) has contracted with Francine Madden, with Constructive Conflict LLC, to begin a national conversation around gray wolves.

“By engaging Ms. Madden and her team, the (USFWS) intends to participate as one among equals with citizens, tribes, states, environmental groups, livestock producers, hunters, and other contributors in this national dialogue. Ms. Madden’s team will work with people from all sides to convene and guide the conversation.”
Federal officials did not answer the question: Will this delay further efforts toward delisting?
The release said this: “This effort will help inform the (USFWS’s) policies and future rulemaking about wolves.”
Following the court settlement earlier this month, Collette Adkins, the Center for Biological Diversity’s carnivore conservation program director and an advisory committee participant in the recent development of Minnesota’s updated wolf management plan, called the settlement “a big win.”
“We’re hopeful that the (USFWS) will finally analyze what’s needed for real wolf recovery in this country, rather than once again try to illegally and prematurely delist wolves,” Adkins said.
The DNR’s most recent estimate of the state’s wolf population is about 2,700 animals. A 1992 federal wolf recovery plan suggested a recovery goal of 1,250 to 1,400 animals.
Earlier this year, a bill to remove federal protections from gray wolves in the Midwest – the Trust the Science Act – passed out of the House Natural Resources Committee. There has been no notable action on the bill since that time.
Tasks assigned to Constructive Conflict LLC and completion dates include defining a collaborative process (September 2023), a comprehensive assessment o the social conflict around gray wolves (August 2024), capacity building and group alignment (August 2025), and reconciling relationships, aligning groups toward shared goals, and beginning shared problem-solving and decision-making (August 2026).
D.C.-based Constructive Conflict’s website states: “We use a relationship-centered approach called Conservation Conflict Transformation to engage dialogue and decision-making processes.”
On the state front
At Outdoor News’ request, Minnesota DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen issued a statement Dec. 18 regarding the state’s activities in the realm of wolves, and to address deer hunter concerns.
In her statement, Strommen said that public input and engagement were and are considered in the DNR’s management of both deer and wolves.
Further, she states, “We’ve heard from some hunters that they are frustrated by a disappointing deer season, particularly in the northeast part of the state. Preliminary numbers do show that harvest was down compared to last year and behind the 10-year average. We also know that Michigan and Wisconsin experienced similar declines in harvest this year. When it comes to deer population levels, multiple factors are at play, including winter severity, density of predators, and habitat, which are intertwined issues that the DNR is actively managing.
“We’ve also heard some hunters’ and other Minnesotans’ questions about the Minnesota DNR’s approach to wolf management. We are in regular communication with our partners at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a broad suite of conservation issues, including wolf management. In a letter to the (USFWS) in 2019, the DNR shared that the recovery of the gray wolf has been a resounding success and that population numbers exceeded the recovery goal in Minnesota. We also shared that the gray wolf range and population expansion in Minnesota show wolves are no longer threatened or likely to become endangered on their suitable range in the state.”
The state’s current wolf management plan was adopted a year ago.
“The plan describes an array of wolf-management strategies, including a framework that can be employed to make a decision about a wolf season, should the wolf’s status as a federally protected, threatened species in Minnesota change,” Strommen said.
Minnesota Deer Hunters Association Executive Director Jared Mazurek recently hosted a YouTube video explaining the organization’s stance on wolf matters. Among his points: While acknowledging that wolves “play an important role in the ecosystem,” MDHA believes wolf management should be returned to the state of Minnesota via federal delisting.
Mazurek noted that wolves of the Northern Rocky Mountain population (in the states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and parts of Washington and Oregon) are managed by state agencies because of Congressional action (that occurred in 2011 and 2017) that stated the matter was “not subject to judicial review.”
A note from the past
The federal-state seesaw that is wolf management has been ongoing for decades. Nearly 40 years ago, the Washington Post contained a story regarding a federal judge’s decision to reject transfer of wolf management from the department of the Interior to the state of Minnesota.
The story, from Jan. 7, 1984, states that Judge Miles Lord, of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, “ruled that the proposed transfer (of management) violated the Endangered Species Act and said former Interior secretary James G. Watt had ‘breached his statutory duty’ by approving the move ‘without explanation.’”
At the time, about 1,200 wolves were believed to exist in the lower 48 states, and nearly all of those animals roamed Minnesota.
According to the Post story, state officials in Minnesota sought management responsibility so that a trapping season could be held. A harvest of 50 to 160 animals had been planned.