The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) has lost its way on wolf protection. The agency recently announced that it was joining with the National Rifle Association and a trophy-hunting lobbyist group in going to court once again to defend the Trump Administration’s nationwide delisting of gray wolves.
Make a tax-deductible gift today to hold the USFWS responsible for doing the work.
This whiplash decision after they announced a year ago they will create a national wolf recovery plan is troubling. And the Administration’s partnership with groups who routinely oppose conservation and wildlife protections is a grave concern.
The path that the agency is choosing would give up on what has been one of the world’s greatest conservation successes. We should all beam with pride at bringing wolves back from the edge of extinction.We began to right a wrong and have made real progress. But that work is nowhere near complete.
Wolves have been restored to a fraction of their former range. By the most forgiving interpretation, wolves occupy less than 10% of their former habitat.1 That success rate would not be acceptable in any other place in any other job and it is not acceptable here. The agency can’t just move on because they do not want to do the work.
What the USFWS is saying is that wolves no longer need the protections of the Endangered Species Act, now that they believe that they have recovered in three states: Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. While we question their assertion that wolves in those states should be without protections (and have fought to restore them), the suggestion that we can call this job done everywhere else is ridiculous. And they are making that argument in court, with the NRA and trophy hunting lobbyists, in defense of a Trump Administration rule that another court already overturned.
This Administration has made a number of curious and sometimes troubling decisions around endangered species protections. This decision is among the worst. By defending the Trump delisting rule that a court already rejected and overturned, the agency is paving the way for more wolf killing–wolves will die by bullet, trap, and brutal neck snares if the USFWS, NRA, and trophy hunters succeed.
Unlike the USFWS, we won’t quit on wolves. We hope you won’t either.Please make a gift today to keep the pressure on this once-proud agency to do the work.
Thank you for your commitment to wildlife and wild places.
Sincerely,
Susan Holmes
Executive Director
Endangered Species Coalition
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1. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/gray_wolves/
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