Group to Sue Fish and Wildlife Service for Reversing Course on Gray Wolf Recovery Plan

As Montana adopts increasingly aggressive measures to shrink its wolf population, a conservation group on Tuesday announced plans to sue federal wildlife managers over their refusal to issue a first-of-its-kind national recovery plan for gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Calling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) decision an “unlawful” policy reversal that undermines the long-term recovery of wolves, the Center for Biological Diversity on Dec. 2 filed the 60-day notice of its intent to sue FWS, per statutory requirements of the ESA. The Center for Biological Diversity intends to file its formal lawsuit in early February.

“We’re challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful decision to once again abandon wolf recovery, and we’ll win,” Collette Adkins, a senior attorney and the carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a prepared statement about the pending lawsuit. “The Fish and Wildlife Service must live up to the reality of what science and the law demand. That means a comprehensive plan that addresses gray wolf recovery across the country.”

The nonprofit group’s notice of the pending litigation comes one month after FWS shifted course under the Trump administration by announcing that it would not prepare a national gray wolf recovery plan because such a plan is “no longer appropriate.” In 2024, however, FWS said it would prepare a national recovery plan for wolves, with a target completion date of December 2025. FWS made the concession after rejecting a petition by a coalition of conservation groups seeking to restore endangered species protections to wolves across the northern Rockies.

Wolves have been protected as an endangered species in the region off and on since they were first delisted in 2008. They have been off the federal endangered species list in the northern Rockies since 2017.

Gray wolves are still listed under the ESA as endangered in 44 states, and are considered threatened in Minnesota; however, in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and portions of eastern Oregon and Washington, the wolves are part of a “distinct population segment” managed under state jurisdiction, with their respective legislatures passing laws allowing wolf harvests, while setting quotas and regulations to manage the populations.

For its part, the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission in August raised the state’s wolf hunting quota by about 37%, approving new regulations that cap the number of wolves that hunters and trappers can kill annually at 452 while stopping just shy of adopting a statewide quota.

According to Adkins, the reliance on these regional plans has stymied full nationwide recovery “because recovery efforts have been piecemeal.”

Moreover, the determination last month by FWS that a national recovery plan isn’t necessary reflects a policy reversal by the Trump administration, Adkins said, describing a dizzying course of “on-and-off again ESA protections” that runs counter to long-term recovery goals.

For example, The Trump administration removed ESA protections for wolves across the lower 48 states just before leaving office in 2020. A federal judge in 2022 then restored those protections, excluding wolves in the northern Rockies, including in Montana, where the court left wolf management to state wildlife officials. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s appeal of that ruling is still pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Then last year, the FWS under the Biden administration announced that a national recovery plan for gray wolves would be a central feature of its “more durable and holistic approach to wolf recovery.” That announcement stemmed from an agreement following a 2022 lawsuit seeking a national wolf recovery plan.

Finally, the FWS last month said it would not release the national recovery plan because the species no longer meets ESA requirements.

“This cycle of on-and-off again protections must end,” according to Adkins. “Wolves deserve to be safe and that’s why we keep fighting for them.”

According to FWP’s 2024 Wolf Report, Montana is home to an estimated 1,091 wolves, a dozen fewer than the 1,103 wolves reported in 2023 and 65 fewer than the 1,156 estimated in 2022. Last year, hunters and trappers harvested 297 wolves, according to the report — the highest number since 2020. Montana’s wolf population peaked in 2011, the year Congress delisted wolves from the federal endangered species list. The population has declined slightly since, as hunting and trapping regulations have grown more liberal.

Although the gray wolf’s current ESA protections do not currently extend to wolves in the northern Rockies, the Center for Biological Diversity and a coalition of environmental groups in August won a lawsuit aimed at restoring federal protections to wolves in the region.

Citing “serious and pervasive” deficiencies in the FWS’ basis for rejecting the groups’ petition seeking to revive federal protections for gray wolves in the northern Rockies, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula issued the 105-page ruling on Aug. 5, delivering a clear victory to the groups who argue that state management policies are increasingly at odds with the spirit of recovery as prescribed by the ESA. Molloy wrote that “state management regimes in Montana and Idaho changed dramatically in 2021, resurrecting many of the management practices and policies responsible for the prior extirpation of the gray wolf from the West.”

The Trump administration is appealing that ruling.

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