A federal court in Montana ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) when the agency determined that gray wolves in the western U.S. do not warrant federal protections.
On Aug. 5, Judge Donald Molloy of the District Court for the District of Montana Missoula Division said in a 105-page opinion and order that the USFWS must reconsider western gray wolves’ status and reissue a decision based on the ESA and best available science.
The ruling comes after environmental groups filed suit earlier this year challenging the USFWS’ determinization that gray wolves in the West do not warrant ESA protections.
“For the most part, plaintiffs are correct,” Molloy wrote. He said USFWS “made numerous unfounded assumptions regarding the future condition of the gray wolf despite recognizing either limitation on those conditions or bias in the population estimates utilized.”
Because these deficiencies are “serious and pervasive,” he continued, they weigh in favor of vacating a 2024 finding that the gray wolf in the West does not warrant federal protections.
USFWS will be sent back to the drawing board to reanalyze threats to the western gray wolf.
“Wolves have yet to recover across the West, and allowing a few states to undertake aggressive wolf-killing regimes is inconsistent with the law,” said Matthew Bishop, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, which represented the environmental groups. “We hope this decision will encourage the Service to undertake a holistic approach to wolf recovery in the West.”
Lawsuit background
In 2021, dozens of environmental groups submitted a petition to the USFWS, asking the agency to relist gray wolves as threatened in the northern Rockies, or to create a larger Western Distinct Population Segment (DPS) with endangered protections.
In 2024, USFWS did not change the wolves’ listing status, but said it would develop a National Recovery Plan for wolves in the lower 48 states. While the agency agreed that wolves in the West qualify as a DPS under the ESA, they found the DPS was recovered and did not warrant listing.
“Despite current levels of regulated harvest, lethal control, and episodic disease outbreaks, wolf abundance in the Western United States has generally continued to increase and occupied range has continued to expand since reintroduction in the 1990s,” the agency said in its February 2024 ruling.
A 2022 report conducted by USFWS, which largely influenced the agency’s later determination, found there were about 2,800 wolves in the western U.S.
Following the agency’s determination, conservation groups filed additional lawsuits, which were compiled into a single suit and heard together in a June hearing.
The groups said the USFWS’ determinization was arbitrary and conflicts with the best available science because “this population segment is: (1) too small; (2) declining; (3) concentrated in a small portion of its historical range; (4) comprised of small, relatively isolated packs (outside the Northern Rockies); (5) subject to high levels of human-caused morality; and (6) experiencing cumulative threats.”
Several entities intervened in the case, including a coalition of hunting groups and the states of Utah and Montana. The state of Idaho also filed an amicus brief.
August court finding
The defendants argued the environmental groups did not show either organizational or associational standing, and that the groups lack standing to challenge the status of currently listed wolves. Molloy agreed one plaintiff, the Center for a Humane Economy, lacked standing, but found the defendants’ other arguments unpersuasive.
“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,” Molloy said.
The environmental groups argued the USFWS failed to do the following:
• Consider a significant portion of the gray wolf’s range by ignoring historical range and discounting both Colorado and the West Coast.
• Consider the best available science on gray wolf population estimates, requirements for genetic diversity and future modeling.
• Evaluate the threat to gray wolves from inadequate existing regulatory mechanisms and overutilization.
“Plaintiffs are largely correct,” Molloy said.
Molloy wrote that wildlife management agencies will likely find themselves in a Catch-22: “If the federal government succeeds in restoring the gray wolf, leading to delisting, then the state agency will predate the wolf, leading to relisting, engendering a fruitless cycle of delisting and relisting,” he said.
“Ultimately,” he continued, “management of Canis lupus must not be by a political yo-yo process. As the law intends, a science-based approach negates this management dilemma.” — Anna Miller Fortozo, WLJ managing editor
