WASHINGTON— Under a settlement approved today by a District of Columbia federal court, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must draft a new recovery plan for gray wolves listed under the Endangered Species Act. The draft plan must be completed within two years unless the agency finds that such a plan will not promote the conservation of the species.

“We’ve long pushed for a new, comprehensive plan to guide gray wolf recovery, so this win is a big deal for us and the wolves,” said Collette Adkins, the Center for Biological Diversity’s carnivore conservation program director and lead attorney on the case. “We’re hopeful that the Fish and Wildlife Service will finally analyze what’s needed for real wolf recovery in this country, rather than once again try to illegally and prematurely delist wolves.”

No plan comprehensively addresses gray wolf recovery nationwide. Many areas where wolves currently live and breed — and where their reestablishment is in its infancy, such as California and Colorado — have no plan to guide their recovery.

The court ruled last summer that the Fish and Wildlife Service “must create a recovery plan for the species it has listed” and cannot rely on subspecies recovery plans that “straightforwardly do not satisfy” the Endangered Species Act. The gray wolf’s recovery plan for the “eastern timber wolf” was developed in 1992 and mostly focuses on Minnesota.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service can no longer rely on its decades-old, piecemeal recovery plans for gray wolves,” said Adkins. “The agency needs to stop neglecting places where wolves live and could recover, like the West Coast, southern Rocky Mountains and northeastern United States.”

Background

Scientists estimate that as many as 2 million gray wolves once roamed North America, including much of the contiguous United States. Because of government-sponsored killing programs, wolf numbers in the lower 48 states dwindled to fewer than 1,000 animals, residing almost entirely in northeastern Minnesota.

Federal protections have allowed the nation’s wolf population to increase slowly, but only to about 1% of their historical numbers and occupying only about 15% of their historical range. Despite this the Service has routinely attempted to remove protection from the species.

Most recently, in November 2020, the agency finalized a rule that removed all Endangered Species Act protections from most gray wolves nationwide. A federal court vacated that rule in February 2022 and restored the wolf’s federal protection in the lower 48 states. Those protections do not extend to wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, however, who are currently not protected under the Act. The Service has not made a final decision on a petition by the Center and its allies to restore federal protections to the region’s wolves.