Judge Orders Endangered Species Status Review for Gray Wolves in Northern Rockies
The ruling against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service comes as western states, including Montana and Idaho, pursue more aggressive policies for hunting and trapping wolves, thereby undermining the species’ recovery
By Tristan Scott
Citing “serious and pervasive” deficiencies with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s basis for rejecting a 2021 petition by a coalition of environmental groups seeking to revive Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, a federal judge in Missoula this week instructed wildlife managers to reconsider.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy issued the 105-page ruling in response to a lawsuit that conservation and animal welfare groups filed last year seeking to either restore protections, or afford new ones, to a distinct population of wolves spanning Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, as well as portions of Washington, Oregon and Utah. The groups challenged the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) determination that listing a distinct population segment of gray wolves in the western U.S. as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is not warranted, despite the increasingly lax wolf hunting regulations in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. The plaintiffs argued that, in making its determination, FWS failed to consider portions of wolves’ historical range; ignored the “best available science” on gray wolf populations and the effects of human-caused mortality; and did not properly evaluate the enduring threat to gray wolves under the regulatory framework adopted by western states.
“For the most part, plaintiffs are correct,” Molloy wrote in his Aug. 5 order, which delivered a clear victory to 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.”
With state agencies basing their management strategies on “commitments to population minimums” while adopting more aggressive hunting and trapping policies, Molloy said they failed to provide a reliable safety net for wolves, thereby undermining the species’ long-term recovery.
“Here, the Service has found that because the gray wolf population in the western United States has ‘recovered’ in the eyes of the ESA, it may now once again be reduced to the minimum number of animals required to avoid complete extirpation. The states are happy to oblige,” Molloy wrote. “While the Service’s conclusion may ultimately square with the text, though not the spirit, of the ESA, Plaintiffs have identified several issues that require further consideration.”
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, Montana is proposing another round of changes to wolf trapping and hunting regulations aimed at further reducing the statewide wolf population, which was last estimated at 1,091 wolves in 2024. That’s 12 fewer than the 1,103 wolves reported in 2023. Wildlife managers with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), which intervened in the lawsuit as a defendant on behalf of FWS, will present the proposal to the Fish and Wildlife Commission on Aug. 21. FWP officials said the proposal aligns with a 2021 directive from Montana’s Republican-controlled legislature, which ordered the state agency to manage wolves at a “sustainable level.”
FWP defines a “sustainable level” as a number that will maintain wolves at recovery status and keep them under state management, while also reducing the population in accordance with statutory directives. Currently, that translates to supporting a minimum of about 450 total wolves, which amounts to 15 breeding pairs under the recovery standards that FWS established. To accomplish that reduction, FWP is proposing removing regional quotas while increasing the statewide quota of wolves that can be harvested to 500, up from the current limit of 334. It also increases individual bag limits to 30 wolves, allowing 15 wolves to be hunted or trapped on a single license. To reach that total, at least five wolves must be hunted and five trapped in regions 1 (northwest) or 2 (west-central), where the wolf population is most concentrated.
This week’s order by Molloy was in response to a lawsuit filed in January, when conservation groups challenged FWS’ denial of their petitions to list a western U.S. distinct population segment (DPS) of gray wolves under the ESA, or alternatively, to relist the DPS in the northern Rockies, which Congress in 2011 removed from the list of threatened and endangered species. FWS denied the petitions despite acknowledging that laws and regulations in Montana and Idaho “designed to substantially reduce” wolf populations are “at odds with modern professional wildlife management.”
Molloy noted this admission in his order, writing that FWS “itself has recognized that a status review is warranted … in light of the ‘credible and substantial information that human-caused mortality may be a potential threat to the species in Idaho and Montana,’” Molloy wrote.
In addition to FWS and FWP, the lawsuit includes five other defendants who intervened on the federal agency’s behalf. They are the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, Safari Club International, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the state of Idaho, and the state of Utah. The defendants argue that gray wolf populations have thrived under state management since 2009; even if the wolf population in the northern Rocky Mountains declined due to human-caused mortality and state wildlife management policies, they argue it is not threatened or endangered, pointing to the relative stability of the wolf populations in recent years despite states expand hunting and trapping opportunities.
Still, Molloy ordered the agency to reassess threats to the gray wolf population in the West in accordance with the ESA’s requirements, including that it employ the best available science in estimating wolf populations. In estimating the current gray wolf population, FWS relied on population estimates provided by state wildlife agencies, including Montana’s FWP. Historically, FWP counted wolves using direct monitoring techniques, such as radio collars and field observations, to provided minimum counts at the end of each calendar year. The “minimum count” approach is used in other states with less wolf abundance, including Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
“However, to reduce reliance on direct monitoring techniques, which have both practical and economic limitations when applied to larger wolf populations, the states with the largest wolf populations, i.e., Idaho and Montana, have been developing alternative population estimate methodologies,” Molloy wrote, noting that Montana described the minimum count approach as “expensive, unrealistic and unnecessary.”
Since 2020, Montana has adopted an integrated patch occupancy model (iPOM), which uses annual hunter surveys, known wolf pack locations, habitat monitoring, and estimates of wolf territory and pack size based on field data to estimate wolf distribution and population size. Idaho, meanwhile, has since 2019 counted wolves using a “space-to-event” model that relies on trail cameras to extrapolate populations counts.
Montana FWP officials have defended the iPOM approach as a scientifically peer-reviewed and cost-effective means of monitoring wolves and documenting their distribution. Although field monitoring was practical two decades ago when the wolf population was still recovering, it’s no longer feasible.
But plaintiffs in the lawsuit argued the models lead to inflated wolf counts, a point with which Molloy agreed.
“While the minimum counts model likely underestimates population size, the methodologies used by Idaho and Montana likely overestimate wolf populations,” Molloy wrote.
He also found that the federal agency arbitrarily relied on state commitments to stop harvesting wolves at certain thresholds without considering what would happen if they were breached, failed to account for unlawful take, and relied on inadequate state and federal regulatory mechanisms.
“It seems that the state management plans will trend precipitously close to threatening continued existence of the gray wolf in the Western DPS, even if they would not result in immediate extirpation,” Molloy wrote.
He continued: “Wildlife management agencies are likely to find themselves in a Catch-22 as they cannot escape from mutually conflicting dependent conditions: if the federal agency succeeds in restoring the gray wolf, leading to delisting, then the state agencies will depredate the wolf, leading to relisting, engendering a fruitless cycle of delisting and relisting.”
The conservation organizations that filed the case are Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, International Wildlife Coexistence Network, Predator Defense, Protect the Wolves, Trap Free Montana, Wilderness Watch, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Clearwater, and Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment. They are represented by the Western Environmental Law Center. Two other groups of conservation organizations also sued the FWS for its decision to deny the petitions to protect wolves across the West. The three cases were consolidated and attorneys on both sides delivered oral arguments before Molloy in June in Missoula.
“We feel vindicated by today’s ruling. Anti-wildlife politicians in the Northern Rockies are managing wolves back to the brink of extinction, and it has to stop before the wolf population collapses under state management,” Lizzy Pennock, carnivore coexistence attorney at WildEarth Guardians, said in a statement. “Today’s ruling is a huge step in the right direction, finally putting us back on the path to protecting this imperiled and iconic native species at a time when Montana’s wildlife agency has proposed hunting and trapping regulations that could wipe out Montana’s wolf population.”