Greetings, Beacon Nation. Tristan Scott here to deliver your Monday digest of news and information, including a look at a trio of wolf cases heading to the 9th Circuit.

Years of legal wrangling over how the federal government protects wolves return to the courtroom tomorrow, when a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments in Missoula in three cases that could determine the future of wolf management across the country.

Two of the cases concern gray wolves, whose protection under the Endangered Species Act has flipped on and off for more than a decade. Wolves in the northern Rockies, including Montana, are managed by the state, while gray wolves across most of the rest of the Lower 48 are federally protected. Rulings in both are being challenged on appeal. The third case involves the Mexican wolf, a smaller subspecies of gray wolf native to the Southwest that is listed separately under the ESA and has been reintroduced in Arizona and New Mexico. That case asks whether the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) lawfully designated the reintroduced population as “nonessential,” a label that carries fewer restrictions.

Arguments begin at 9:30 a.m. in the Donald W. Molloy Courtroom at the Russell E. Smith Federal Courthouse. The Mexican wolf case goes first, followed by the gray wolf cases. The hearing will be livestreamed on the court’s YouTube channel.

The gray wolf cases

The northern Rockies appeal stems from a 2025 ruling by Missoula-based U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, who found “serious and pervasive” deficiencies in FWS’ 2024 denial of petitions to relist wolves in the region and directed the agency to reconsider. The Center for Biological Diversity and Humane World for Animals (formerly the Humane Society of the United States), among others, brought that case.

The Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, which intervened in the case, along with Safari Club International and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, is appealing the ruling. In their opening brief, filed in April, the groups argue FWS’ denial of the relisting petitions was a science-based decision and that the district court “had no authority to overturn” it. They contend the petitions sought to undermine the northern Rockies wolf population’s recovery by lumping it together with other Western wolf populations that haven’t met recovery criteria, and say the ruling threatens state-led wolf management.

The second gray wolf appeal challenges a 2022 ruling from a federal judge in California that overturned a Trump-era rule stripping protections from gray wolves across most of the country. That decision restored protections everywhere except the northern Rockies.

Wolves in Montana, Idaho, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and northern Utah lost federal protection in 2011 through a congressional budget rider, and Wyoming followed in 2012. The first Trump administration finalized a rule in 2020 removing protections across the rest of the Lower 48, setting off the litigation now before the court.

FWS said in 2024 that it would prepare a first-ever national recovery plan, then reversed course last November, and the Center for Biological Diversity announced plans to sue. Advocacy groups say the Trump administration directed FWS in early September to again consider delisting wolves nationally.

Attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity and Humane World for Animals, parties in both gray wolf cases, will take questions outside the courthouse in Missoula after the hearing.

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