USFWS Says National Wolf Recovery Plan Not Needed

The US Fish and Wildlife Service says it’s no longer necessary to come up with a national recovery plan for gray wolves in the western two-thirds of Washington and Oregon and much of the rest of the Lower 48 because the species’ ESA listing “is no longer appropriate” thanks to how successful their recovery has been and will continue to be.

This week’s move by the Department of the Interior under the Trump Administration halts a February 2024 announcement by the Biden Administration that USFWS would come up with a national plan as a result of late 2023 federal court settlement.

In a press release out today, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation summarized, “Essentially, the USFWS stands by its 2020 assessment and evaluation that wolves have already met recovery goals.”

The 10-page determination that a national plan isn’t needed came from USFWS Headquarters with “major contributions” from regional offices. It was signed on Monday, November 3, by Gina Shultz, a longtime USFWS staffer and acting assistant director of the Ecological Services Program in Washington, DC.

“(We) found that recovery plans would not promote the conservation of the gray wolf 44-State or Minnesota listed entities because listing these entities is no longer appropriate under 4(a)(1) of the Endangered Species Act (Act) and measures provided pursuant to the Act are no longer necessary. A consequence of our findings that a recovery plan would not promote the conservation of the two gray wolf listed entities is that recovery plans are no longer statutorily required under the Act and the Service will not develop recovery plans for them. However, these findings do not affect any other provisions of the Act. All other provisions of the Act still apply while the two entities remain listed, including sections
7, 9, and 10 of the Act, consistent with any designated critical habitat, and any regulations issued under sections 4(d) and 10(j) of the Act,” the document states.

The 44-state gray wolf entity includes all or portions of those states in the coterminous US outside of the Northern Rockies, where wolves have long since been federally delisted, and southern portions of Arizona and New Mexico, which are home to Mexican wolves.

USFWS notes the West Coast states all have wolf management plans with recovery objectives and wolves are expected to continue to filter into them from the Northern Rockies and western Canada and settle in available habitats.

The requirement to create a nationwide wolf recovery plan came out of a December 2023 lawsuit settlement between USFWS and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Touted as a “first-ever” for wolves, the plan had been expected to be completed by December 12, but the settlement also contained a kill switch: “unless the Service finds that such a plan will not promote the conservation of the species and posts the finding on its website.”

That appears to now have been done, shelving the plan’s creation … for the time being, at least.

Wolves have long been fought over in court as there have been multiple attempts by the federal government under various administrations on both sides of the aisle to delist them.

“The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation maintains that state wildlife agencies can and should sustainably manage recovered wolf populations just as they manage elk, black bears, deer and other wildlife species,” RMEF also stated in its press release.

Wolves are federally delisted in the far eastern thirds of both Washington and Oregon and remain under various state-based protections throughout the rest of each.