On August 5, a federal judge in Missoula, Montana, vacated a 2024 ruling by the US Fish and Wildlife Service that refused to re-list the Northern Rocky Mountain population of gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act. The decision threatens the current status of this wolf population and could eventually result in an end to hunting and trapping in three western states.
Already, a coalition of sporting groups have appealed the judge’s decision, adding another chapter in the seemingly endless story of the battle over wolves in the West.
“Safari Club International (SCI) is frustrated that the court ignored the reality of successful wolf conservation in the Western U.S. and instead ruled in favor of the plaintiffs’ arguments that are clearly biased against state wildlife management and counter to the law and the science,” said SCI CEO W. Laird Hamberlin. “SCI will appeal this mistaken ruling as soon as possible in order to defend legal, regulated hunting as part of science driven, state wildlife management programs for wolf species.”
A quick refresher for those just joining the story: In 2009, after almost 40 years, gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains were de-listed from the Endangered Species Act after their numbers rebounded from almost nothing in the 1970s to well past their target number of 450 in this region by the mid-2000s.
In 2011, Congress turned over management of this population of grey wolves to five states: Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, as well as Oregon and Washington in the eastern one-third of their states. (Wolves are still listed as threatened in Minnesota and remain endangered in the other 44 states following a 2022 court decision.)
Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho wasted no time in establishing wolf hunting and trapping seasons. In Montana’s case, they aimed to reduce the state’s population of around 1,100 wolves to 500, a number mandated by the Montana state legislature in 2021 as a “sustainable level.” Despite hunters and trappers taking significant numbers of wolves every year–including 326 in 2020 and 297 last year–populations have remained steady around the 1,000 mark.
Those healthy populations are what led US Fish and Wildlife to reject the re-listing, writing, “We concluded that the gray wolf in the Western United States is not in danger of extinction, or likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future, throughout all of its range or in any significant portion of its range.”
But those same stable populations have led the Montana state legislature to consider even more aggressive wolf-reduction measures, including a possible unlimited quota to get to that target number of 500 wolves. A recent proposal by Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks doesn’t go that far, but it would significantly expand wolf hunting and trapping, increasing the statewide wolf quota from 334 to 500, and liberalizing bag limits to allow 15 wolves to be taken with a single hunting or trapping license. That means that one person could theoretically take a total of 30 wolves per season. Although that’s likely to increase the annual wolf harvest, those changes still aren’t likely to crater this population of wolves.
However, Donald Molloy, the U.S. district judge who struck down the Fish and Wildlife determination, cited the Montana legislature’s mandates as justification for his ruling, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the state laws are “politically motivated, legislative interference with agency discretion and management authority.” He also ruled that states are not using the “best available science” required by the ESA to arrive at their estimations of wolf populations–Montana uses hunter surveys and statistical models rather than direct observation of animals in the wild.
Molloy went on to state that US Fish and Wildlife didn’t adequately consider recovery of wolves across their entire historical range in their decision. Of course, if wolves returned to their full range from before European contact, they’d likely be in your backyard right now.
His decision comes as the result of a saga that began in 2021, when a coalition of advocacy groups filed a petition with the USFWS asking them to re-list gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and strip management power from the states. Those groups sued when the USFWS denied the petition last year, and this judge’s ruling is the first step in that legal process.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte’s office responded immediately to the ruling: “Montana has a healthy, sustainable population of wolves. While we are reviewing the decision, it will not implicate our state’s management efforts or our wolf season.”
Safari Club International, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation also announced their intention to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This ruling is the latest string of nonstop litigation by environmental groups seeking to frustrate the original intent of the ESA, which is to recover endangered species and return them to state-based management, not keep them perpetually listed and under the authority of the federal government,” Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation President and CEO Kyle Weaver said in a press release. “Whether it’s the wolf or the grizzly bear, once an animal receives ESA protections, it becomes nearly impossible to remove them, even if populations meet recovery criteria over an extended period of time. The ESA needs an adjustment to renew its focus on real species recovery.”
Judge Molloy’s ruling does not change the status of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, so this year’s hunting and trapping season should be unaffected. But if sportsmen’s groups fail in their appeal, it could jeopardize state control of the iconic species and return all wolves back to the Endangered Species List.
Wildlife management via the courts isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time, but that’s what we’re likely to get for the foreseeable future.
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