The gray wolf’s miraculous recovery is a true success story. Unfortunately, President Joe Biden has chosen to ignore this success for reasons of political expediency.
Preventing the extinction of an iconic species should be followed by delisting the formerly endangered species. Management should then return to the states. That’s what the Trump administration ordered last year, in compliance with rules clearly laid out in the Endangered Species Act. But today, the Biden administration is ignoring those rules and the science in order to score points with special interests.
After the Trump administration recommended an end to federal protections for wolves in the contiguous United States, Biden’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initially agreed with the delisting. But then, after radical environmentalist groups the Center for Biological Diversity and the Humane Society submitted petitions to thwart the delisting process, the administration flip-flopped. Suddenly, it agreed that there was “substantial information” to suggest relisting the species under the ESA was the right move.
Gray wolf delisting — wildlife management in general, for that matter — shouldn’t be made into a partisan issue.
There’s been great consensus on wolf conservation efforts across Democratic and Republican administrations. Before former President Donald Trump announced that management would return to states and Native American tribes last October, President Barack Obama’s first interior secretary, Ken Salazar, and his FWS director, Dan Ashe, reached the same conclusion.
Of course, consensus shouldn’t matter if the environmentalists are correct about gray wolves being an imperiled species. But they’re not. The science backs it up: The gray wolf is an apex predator that doesn’t need continued ESA protection.
To be fair, this wasn’t always the case.
In the 1960s, there were fewer than 1,000 wolves roaming the country. Since being awarded ESA protections in 1974, however, the population has seen 300% growth. The lower-48 population, largely concentrated in the Northern Rocky Mountains and Western Great Lakes regions, currently boasts over 6,000 wolves. As a result, wildlife biologists determined that wolves have exceeded their carrying capacity and met the threshold of recovery.
The science on wolves is settled.
Once an endangered or threatened species is no longer in danger of going extinct, as in the gray wolf’s case, it must be delisted and management must go to states boasting vibrant populations. Section 4 of the ESA requires states to cooperate with FWS for a “minimum of five years in order to assess each species’ ability to sustain itself without the ESA’s protective measures.”
Those who study and who are closest in proximity to the wolves, namely state wildlife biologists and experts, should be trusted to manage this recovered species. These stakeholders can continue to track, monitor, and assess the health of wolves to ensure they won’t need to be relisted.
Preservationist environmentalists, far removed from the field, claim these experts are ill-equipped to manage wolves. They lament that state wildlife management plans often recommend hunts to help cull numbers and reduce conflicts.
But wolves reproduce quickly. If populations are left unchecked, it leads to livestock predation and destruction of other species’ populations. Furthermore, managed hunts are supported by the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. But these purported wolf advocates can’t stand the idea of a wolf being culled. So they engage in serial litigation, “suing and settling” to interfere with the necessary hunts.
Without active management options, states and localities suffer increased human-wolf conflicts and livestock predation. That’s terrible for everyone involved.
Let’s be clear: Delisting a recovered species won’t lead to its decimation. It actually means the ESA of 1973 is working as intended! For wolf recovery efforts to succeed, gray wolf management must return to the states. Nobody wants to see this keystone species extirpated from the ecosystem — hunters included.
The Biden administration would be wise to follow the science and keep the gray wolf delisting in place.
Gabriella Hoffman is a Young Voices contributor and host of the District of Conservation podcast. Follow her on Twitter at @Gabby_Hoffman.
