Proponents say the species has rebounded after 45 years of government support and threatens cattle herds, but environmentalists disagree
The Trump administration is moving to delist the gray wolf from Endangered Species Act protections in the Lower 48 states, setting the stage for another potential clash over environmental policies with green groups and Democrats in Congress.
Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Wednesday the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would soon propose a rule to delist the gray wolf, which has enjoyed federal protection since it became one of the first species designated endangered in 1974.
Management of the large predator would instead be turned over to states and tribes. A spokesman for the wildlife agency said the action is justified because wolf numbers have rebounded greatly in places where they were nearly exterminated in the last century.
“Recovery of the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act is one of our nation’s great conservation successes,” said the spokesman.
Environmental groups disputed that conclusion, calling the action unwarranted and claiming it was intended to benefit hunters and ranchers.
“The Trump administration is dead set on appeasing special interests that want to kill wolves,” said Collette Adkins, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit in Tucson, Ariz., that has previously sued the Fish and Wildlife Service to restore endangered species listings.
Ranchers have argued for years that a growing wolf population has threatened their herds in Western states including Idaho and Montana after being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1995.
Depredation by wolves is reaching critical levels, with some counties in Oregon and Washington seeing dozens of livestock killed by the animals every year, said Ethan Lane, senior executive director with the Public Lands Council, a Western cattlemen’s trade group based in Washington.
“The gray wolf has exceeded all expectations and benchmarks for recovery across the country,” Mr. Lane said in an email. “Activists should be celebrating this as an ESA success story, rather than working to prove that the Act is broken by fighting to keep a fully recovered species on the list.”
Federal officials estimate there are more than 5,000 gray wolves in the Lower 48 states, compared with a few hundred in the 1970s. That figure doesn’t include a subspecies of Mexican gray wolf that would remain under endangered species protection.
Alaska is home to as many as 10,000 wolves, which aren’t considered endangered.
Over the past decade, the gray wolf in the Lower 48 has been delisted from the federal endangered species list in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and parts of Oregon, Washington and Utah, but remains under the federal protections in the rest of the continental U.S. Other states where gray wolves can be found and are currently protected include California, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
If the proposed rule to delist the gray wolf goes through, it would likely precipitate a heated court battle with green groups that fought past efforts to roll back protections for species including the greater sage grouse.
Once the proposed rule is published in the federal record, there is an opportunity for public comment, after which it may go into effect.