Action timeline

April 23, 1990 – The Center initiated the return of the Mexican gray wolf into portions of its historic range in the Southwest by suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Defense.

January 12, 1998 – The Service published a  final rule declaring the Mexican gray wolf a nonessential, experimental population, allowing for the take of wolves in the wild.

November 1998 – In the same year that wolves were first reintroduced into the wild, the Center developed the Wolf Safe Haven Plan to help guide recovery efforts and ensure that wolves were fully protected.

January 1, 1999 – After livestock-industry groups sued the Service in 1998, demanding the removal of all wolves in the wild, the Center soon intervened on the side of the government and the industry suit was dismissed the following year.

October 2000 – Poacher James M. Rogers was convicted of illegally shooting a wolf after a reward paid by the Center, other conservation organizations, and the federal government led to a tip in the case.

April 2000 – Advocacy by the Center helped spur a federal rule approving the re-release of wolves that had been captured from the wild into New Mexico.

January 2005 – The Center participated in a successful coalition lawsuit overturning a Service wolf reclassification rule that downlisted wolves to threatened, divided gray wolves into distinct population segments, and precipitated a recovery-planning process that would have established Mexican gray wolves outside their historic range instead of where they evolved.

January 2005 – A federal judge dismissed a second case by the livestock industry, in which the Center served as an intervenor-defendant. The livestock industry was again seeking removal of all wolves from the wild.

December 14, 2006 – The Center sued the Service for refusing to implement the recommendations of a scientific panel convened to assess the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program two years earlier.

August 7, 2007 – Following the Center’s 2006 lawsuit, the Service initiated a process to change the rules for management of the wolf reintroduction program. A draft Environmental Impact Statement was expected to be issued in spring 2008.

May 1, 2008 – The Center and allies sued the Service for its decision to put wolf reintroduction in the hands of agencies that have allowed wolf killings to rise, as well as for approving SOP 13.

May 16, 2008 – After the government-appointed wolf-management team refused to end SOP 13, a policy requiring all wolves with a certain depredation record to be “removed" — despite the request of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and the recommendations of numerous scientists — the Center wrote a letter to the team requesting a cessation of government wolf removals.

September 23, 2008 – Eastern Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, key Mexican gray wolf habitat, proposed a new policy requiring livestock owners to dispose of their own animals’ carcasses when those animals died from non-wolf causes. This measure would help prevent endangered wolves from becoming habituated to preying on livestock rather than their natural prey. The Center requested that the policy be applied not just in the Apache National Forest portion of the Blue Wolf Range Recovery Area, but also on all lands governed by the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest’s Revised Forest Plan.

December 3, 2008 – The Center petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to update the Mexican gray wolf’s ancient recovery plan, published in 1982 and never revised.

December 22, 2008 – The Center and 16 other organizations asked the Service to replace the photograph of the Mexican gray wolf program’s “poster wolf” — prominently displayed on the agency’s Web site and at its Washington, D.C. headquarters — because the wolf was trapped and inadvertently killed in 2005.

February 6, 2009 – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced there were only two breeding pairs of Mexican gray wolves in the wild at the end of 2008 — a decline from just three breeding pairs at the end of 2007. The low number resulted from federal trapping and shooting of 19 wolves in 2007, including reproductively successful pairs.

March 10, 2009 – The Center and allies submitted comments on a Fish and Wildlife Service draft “conservation assessment” analyzing the current Mexican gray wolf management program. We called for development of a new Mexican wolf recovery plan to replace the outdated 1982 plan, as well as for a temporary cessation of removals of Mexican wolves from the wild.

March 25, 2009 – In passing the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, Congress approved a demonstration project involving federal compensation for livestock losses to wolves, as well as federal funding for nonlethal activities to reduce the risk of livestock losses to wolves.

August 11, 2009 – The Center petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to formally separate the Mexican gray wolf from other U.S. wolf populations and list it under the Endangered Species Act as either an endangered subspecies or a “distinct population segment.” On the same day, ending a Center lawsuit, a court ordered USDA Wildlife Services to release records detailing where Mexican wolves killed livestock prior to the agency shooting and trapping them.

November 13, 2009 – In response to Center litigation, the Fish and Wildlife Service reclaimed its decision-making authority over wolf management from a multiagency group hostile to wolf recovery, as well as scrapping the wolf-killing rule SOP 13.