Greetings, Beacon Nation! Welcome to your Monday edition of the Daily Roundup. I’m Tristan Scott joining you after a high-stakes weekend that kicked off when the dinner bell rang Friday and didn’t stop until a frozen pizza (topped with fresh local veggies, of course) left the oven at 9 p.m. Sunday. That’s life in northwest Montana in mid-August, when the remaining days of summer are numbered but the stoke is too high to count.

The problem with that math is it’s hard to keep track of the news when you’re wringing the moisture out of every weekend before plunging back into the workaday routine. Don’t get discouraged! We curate the Daily Roundup to ease you back into the news cycle without overwhelming your system.

So, breathe in, and don’t miss out!

Days after a federal judge in Missoula overturned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision not to restore federal Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, a coalition of hunting groups filed a notice of their intent to appeal the order with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Those groups — the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, Safari Club International and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation — have standing to file the joint appeal because they joined the Fish and Wildlife Service as defendant-intervenors when a broad coalition of environmental groups sued the federal agency last year. The conservation 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 is not warranted, despite the increasingly lax wolf hunting regulations in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

But the sportsmen’s groups framed the latest ruling in support of the petitions as another example of the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA) interminable stranglehold on wildlife management, and further evidence that “until wolves are recovered across the entirety of the Lower 48, including active, protective, management throughout its historic range, that all wolves everywhere should remain protected under the Endangered Species Act.”

“They asked FWS to use the wolf’s recovery against it,” Michael Jean, an attorney representing the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, said. “We had to appeal this decision. This decision seems to hold that unless a species is not recovered across its entire historical range, then it has to stay listed — regardless of thriving populations. It’s difficult to see how the wolf, or other listed species, will ever be deemed recovered under that standard.”

Gray wolves are still listed under the ESA as endangered in the Lower 48, 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 since 2011, with their respective legislatures passing laws allowing wolf harvests, while setting quotas and regulations to manage the populations.

“Since then, the wolves have thrived, and expanded into surrounding areas, including northern California, western Washington and Oregon, and Colorado,” according to the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation. “That wasn’t good enough for several animal-rights organizations who asked FWS to combine the recovered Northern Rocky Mountain wolves with wolves in the neighboring western states and list them as an endangered species.”

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, the author of last week’s order instructing FWS to reconsider the petition by wildlife conservation groups, wrote that the problem with the “wolves are recovered” logic is that state agencies have been basing their management strategies on “commitments to population minimums” while adopting more aggressive hunting and trapping policies. Under those management strategies, Molloy said states failed to provide a reliable safety net for wolves, thereby undermining the species’ long-term recovery.

“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.

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.

The alliance of outdoor sporting groups said the new hunting and trapping regulations are necessary as wolves expand their range and their population, and accused environmental groups of hijacking the ESA to perpetuate litigation.

“This ruling is the latest string of nonstop litigation by environmental groups seeking to frustrate the original intent of the ESA, which is to recover endangered species and return them to state-based management, not keep them perpetually listed and under the authority of the federal government,” RMEF President and CEO Kyle Weaver said in a prepared statement. “Whether it’s the wolf or the grizzly bear, once an animal receives ESA protections, it becomes nearly impossible to remove them, even if populations meet recovery criteria over an extended period of time. The ESA needs an adjustment to renew its focus on real species recovery.”

Here’s what else you should be reading to kick off your week!

What You Can Buy for About $1,200,000: In Romy Caro’s latest real estate roundup, she features a custom-built home on Buffalo Hill golf course; a Whitefish residence just steps from City Beach; and a Columbia Falls property on 10 level acres. See all the listings here.