USFWS asks court to toss wolf-relisting ruling

Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday, Sept. 13 asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to vacate a district court ruling that more than two years ago returned gray wolves outside the northern Rocky Mountains region to the endangered species list.

The relisting in February of 2022 resulted from a lawsuit filed by wolf protectionist groups and followed federal delisting of the species in 2020.

Thereafter, several parties appealed the district court’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The U.S. government joined the appeal in April of 2022.

According to the USFWS’s recent court filing, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California “identified several purported errors with the USFWS’s scientific determination that the listed gray wolves are no longer endangered.”

However, according to the USFWS brief, “The rule removing gray wolf entities from the list of endangered and threatened species should be upheld. The gray wolf is one of the (Endangered Species Act’s) biggest success stories; it has made a remarkable recovery and now thrives in the continental United States in two large, expanding metapopulations that are also connected to large populations of wolves in Canada.

“The district court’s decision faulting the (USFWS’s) extensive recovery analysis fundamentally misunderstands the ESA, the relevant science, and the role of a reviewing court …”

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The court filing states that in Minnesota, under ESA protections, wolves expanded their range by nearly 300% and population numbers have fluctuated between 2,000 and 3,000 wolves since the early 2000s.

“As the Minnesota wolf population grew, dispersing wolves colonized and established packs in Wisconsin and Michigan, and those populations multiplied and thrived,” the brief states. “Combined, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan now regularly contain over 4,000 wolves. These wolves are connected to about 12,000 to 14,000 wolves in Canada.”

In April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution to remove ESA protections of gray wolves in the lower 48 states.

Minnesota Congressman Pete Stauber called the agency’s action last week the “right step” in restoring wolf delisting in Minnesota, and in neighboring states – Wisconsin and Michigan – with populations of gray wolves.

“I now call 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 across the Lower 48,” Stauber said in a statement.

Minnesota’s wolf population is estimated to be about 2,700 animals.

According to a statement from the Center for Biological Diversity, which has joined in past lawsuits to retain federal protections for wolves, the USFWS action offers “a full defense of the agency’s 2020 decision to delist wolves in the lower 48, which a district court set aside in 2022. Wolves haven’t recovered in the vast majority of their historical range, and turning management over to the states will undoubtedly result in a bloodbath.”

Defenders of Wildlife, a plaintiff in lawsuit that halted 2020 delisting, last week criticized the USFWS action: “Delisting at this time would set us on a backward trajectory, imperiling the species before it’s made a full recovery,” according to a statement from Ellen Richmond, senior attorney for the group.

Some of the defenses offered by the USFWS in its brief include the following:

• The district court’s decision “rests on its mistaken belief that the ESA requires the (USFWS) to protect individual members of a healthy species and to restore that species throughout its historical range.”

• Further, “The district court held that the (USFWS) erred by failing to consider threats to wolves in areas of the United States where wolf populations no longer exist.

“As a practical matter, however, the (USFWS) cannot evaluate the threat of humans to wolves in places where wolves do not exist. Besides, that type of analysis would matter only if the ESA required the (USFWS) to restore each listed species to every place it existed historically. But the (federal) statute imposes no such obligation.”

• The district court also erred in determining that the USFWS failed to consider the adequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms to protect wolves after delisting. The court credited the USFWS’s conclusion that state regulatory mechanisms will protect wolves after delisting, once management of wolves returns to the states.

“Yet the court held that the (USFWS) should have said more about federal regulatory mechanisms, including that some land-management plans lack specific guidelines for wolves. But under the ESA, the (USFWS) is only required to examine regulatory mechanisms that will apply after delisting and determine whether those mechanisms will be inadequate to protect the species. Contrary to the district court’s suggestion, the (USFWS) need not conclude that the mechanisms are the best or most protective.”

• “The court’s conclusion also misunderstands the science of species vulnerability. All species are affected to some degree by threats like disease, predation, and human-caused mortality. So putting a spotlight on the most vulnerable individuals of a species will always lead to the conclusion that those individuals are at risk. But that does not mean that every species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range now or in the foreseeable future.

“The (ESA) is not meant to protect individual members of a species that is not threatened or endangered.”

Another suit

The brief filed by the USFWS comes on the heels of yet another lawsuit involving wolves, this one from the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, filed Sept. 9.

A press release announced the suit: Today … the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to compel the agency to issue findings on two petitions requesting gray wolf delisting and downlisting under the Endangered Species Act, the release states.

“Today, we’re making good on our promise to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service for its failure to timely respond to our petitions in accordance with the ESA,” said Michael Jean, litigation counsel at the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation. “Unsurprisingly, the agency has asked us on multiple occasions to refrain from bringing this suit. But we will never refrain from holding agencies accountable to their statutory mandates to scientifically manage wildlife.”

According to the release, in June of 2023, the SAF, along with the Michigan Bear Hunters Association, Upper Peninsula Bear Houndsmen Association, and Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, filed two petitions with the USFWS requesting the agency delist gray wolves in the Western Great Lakes and downlist West Coast wolves to threatened. “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 says.

The first petition requests that the USFWS recognize and delist wolves in Western Great Lakes states – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (including areas in adjoining states), the release states. The second petition asks the USFWS to downlist West Coast wolves – wolves in western Washington, western Oregon, and California from endangered to threatened.

“The ESA is crystal clear in its petition process: FWS must issue a preliminary 90-day finding on our petitions and make a final decision within one year,” said Torin Miller, associate litigation counsel at the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, in the release. “FWS has done neither, and we’re happy to remind them that the ESA’s provisions are not optional.”