SAVING THE NORTHERN ROCKY MOUNTAINS GRAY WOLF

Due mostly to federal predator control and conflicts with the livestock industry, the gray wolf was extirpated from the West by 1945. Today, after centuries of fear and superstition, research has given the wolf a new image as a social creature with an indispensible role in ecosystems — and Endangered Species Act protection gave it a new chance to thrive. Unfortunately, the beautiful carnivore is still persecuted by federal predator control and poachers, and wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains have been removed from the endangered species list — even with a long way to go before recovery.

In 2011, northern Rockies gray wolves came under an unprecedented attack in Congress. Ultimately, wolves in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah were robbed of federal protections with the passing of a budget bill including a rider that delisted them and set the stage for near-term delisting in Wyoming. Just one day after delisting, the Center filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the anti-wolf rider; the previous month, we’d proposed a settlement to head off congressional delisting — but to no avail. A federal judge, while effectively condemning Congress’s anti-wolf rider as unconstitutional, in early August 2011 reluctantly denied the Center’s challenge of the rider. The same day, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced an agreement with Wyoming Governor Matt Mead that Wyoming gray wolves would be removed from the endangered species list and the state would be required to keep only 100 wolves, or 10 breeding pairs, alive in the state (outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks). Just a few days later, the Center and allies filed an appeal challenging the constitutionality of the anti-wolf rider.

Long before the 2011 congressional attack, northern Rockies wolves had no easy time of it. A bad blow came in February 2008, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would remove their federal protections, leaving wolf management to individual states that refused to take the animal’s conservation seriously. Immediately after the announcement took effect, wolves began falling victim to bullets, so a coalition of groups, including the Center, filed suit. In July, after 100-plus northern Rockies wolves had already been indiscriminately shot, a judge temporarily restored the wolves to the endangered species list — and in September the Service withdrew from the suit. Just before the Bush administration left office, it announced a rule to strip protections from gray wolves in the Rockies and Midwest — and though the rule was halted when President Barack Obama took office, in March 2009 the Service moved forward with delisting the wolves anyway. The Center and allies filed suit in June, and in August 2010 a judge reinstated protections for all northern Rockies wolves, preventing wolf hunting from going forward in Montana and Idaho.

In 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Service prematurely downlisted them from endangered to threatened status, sparking a suit by the Center and allies, after which the wolves’ endangered standing was restored. The Center has also forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to agree to assess the environmental effects of a sheep-grazing station near Yellowstone National Park, which threatens wolves’ ability to successfully migrate between the Park and central Idaho; such migration is vital to ending the genetic isolation of Yellowstone wolves.

In fact, genetic isolation threatens all gray wolves, whose three main populations — in the northern Rockies, upper Midwest and Southwest — are small and disconnected. To spur true, nationwide gray wolf recovery, in 2010 the Center petitioned and filed a notice of intent to sue the Obama administration to compel the development of a national recovery plan to establish wolf populations in suitable habitat in the Pacific Northwest, California, southern Rockies, New England and Colorado Plateau.