US won’t restore protections for wolves in Rockies, proposes national recovery plan
Federal wildlife officials on Friday rejected requests from conservation groups to restore protections for gray wolves in the northern U.S. Rocky Mountains, saying the predators are not in danger of extinction as some states try to reduce their numbers through hunting.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also said it would work on a first-ever national wolf recovery plan, after previously pursuing some recovery in several regions of the country. The agency expects to complete work on the plan in December 2025.
The denial of the conservation groups’ petitions allows state-sanctioned wolf hunting to continue in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Federal officials estimate the wolf population in the region, which also includes Washington, California and Oregon, stood at nearly 2,800 animals at the end of 2022.
“The population maintains high genetic diversity and connectivity, which further supports their ability to adapt to future changes,” the agency said in a statement.
Conservationists who say wolves are still endangered after returning from near extinction last century rejected the decision, complaining that Idaho and Montana have adopted increasingly aggressive wolf-killing measures that include trapping, snaring and months-long hunting seasons.
“We are disappointed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuses to hold states accountable for the wolf conservation promises they made a decade ago,” said Susan Holmes, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition.
Antipathy toward wolves for killing livestock and big game dates to early European settlement of the American West in the 19th century, and flared up again after wolf populations recovered under federal protection. That recovery has led to a bitter backlash from hunters and ranchers angry about wolf attacks on herds of big game and livestock. They claim that protection is no longer justified.
Congress in 2011 removed Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies region.
The Trump administration lifted Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the rest of the US just before Republicans left office in 2020. But a federal judge restored protections outside the Northern Rockies in 2022.
In response to Friday’s announcement, the Republican chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee called on the wildlife agency to remove remaining protections for gray wolves.
“It remains clear that the gray wolf is a recovered species and its management should be devolved to the states. It is time for the federal government to get out of the way,” said Representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas.
Wolf management already falls under state jurisdiction in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and parts of Oregon, Washington and Utah.
Lawmakers in Montana and Idaho plan to cull even more wolf packs blamed for periodic attacks on livestock and reduce the elk and deer herds that many hunters prize.
States’ Republican governors in recent months have signed into law measures expanding when, where and how wolves can be killed. That raised alarm among Democrats, former conservationists and advocacy groups, who said increased hunting pressure could reduce wolf numbers to unsustainable levels.
Despite the hunting pressure they face in some states, wolves from the North Rockies region have continued to expand into new areas in Washington, Oregon, California and Colorado. Colorado also began reintroducing wolves to more parts of the state this winter, under a plan imposed by voters under a narrowly approved 2020 ballot initiative.
There is continued political pressure to remove protections for wolves in the western Great Lakes region. When protections were briefly lifted under the Trump administration, Wisconsin hunters using dogs and trappers flew past the state’s harvest goal and killed nearly twice as many as planned.