Would lifting federal protections for gray wolves impact Colorado’s reintroduction efforts?

Back and forth over the protection status of gray wolves continues as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service filed its opening brief last week in an appeal case seeking to remove the species from the Endangered Species Act.

Any decisions in the case will not impact Colorado’s reintroduction efforts.

Gray wolves were first listed as endangered in the United States and Mexico in 1978. The only exception was in Minnesota, where gray wolves were, and still are, considered a threatened species (a step below endangered).

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In November 2020, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act in the lower 48 states, effective Jan. 4, 2021.

This decision was challenged by multiple environmental groups and ultimately repealed by the federal district court in February 2022. The court restored the protection of these wolves, stating that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to show wolf populations could be sustained in certain regions without that federal protection, according to AP News.

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The Biden administration appealed this decision in April 2022. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service filed its opening brief in this case last week on Friday, Sept. 13.

According to an emailed statement from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson on Tuesday, Sept. 17, the rationale is not to halt wolf recovery efforts but to take a different approach.

“The Department of the Interior remains steadfastly committed to the protection, preservation, and longevity of gray wolves,” according to the statement. “We recognize that this work must go beyond the Endangered Species Act to facilitate a durable and holistic approach to wolf recovery.”

The federal agency is crafting a nationwide gray wolf recovery plan for publication by December 2025. In its February 2024 announcement of the plan, it stated that this plan would address courts’ concerns that the agency doesn’t have a plan to sustain gray wolves without the current protections.

“Recovery plans provide a vision for species recovery that is connected to site-specific actions for reducing threats and conserving listed species and their ecosystems,” according to the statement from a spokesperson.

Environmental advocacy organizations, including the Defenders of Wildlife, argue that removing these federal protections could impact species’ recovery in the West, potentially reopening hunting in some areas and destabilizing populations.

“Delisting at this time would set us on a backward trajectory, imperiling the species before it’s made a full recovery,” wrote Ellen Richmond, senior attorney with Defenders of Wildlife, in a press release.

Colorado is one of 44 states where gray wolves remain listed both as endangered under the federal act. Species listed as endangered have certain protections to increase their numbers and reduce threats to their survival. In Colorado, the species are also listed as an experimental population under a 10(j) rule. 

The Service finalized the 10(j) rule in December 2023, a few weeks before Colorado released the first 10 gray wolves. It listed the animal as a “non-essential experimental population,” a designation meant to provide management flexibility, according to information from the federal agency. 

According to Travis Duncan, public information officer with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, “If the species were to be delisted, wolves would be managed as described in the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan, and the 10(j) rule would be moot.”

“The management would not drastically differ whether the species were to be listed or not,” he added.

Colorado’s Wolf Restoration and Management Plan was finalized in May 2023 amid this uncertainty over the future federal legal status of gray wolves.

“Because of the uncertainty about the federal status of wolves, close coordination with (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) has occurred throughout the Plan development process and will necessarily continue through the implementation stages,” the plan states. 

According to the plan, gray wolves are also considered “state endangered” in Colorado, meaning that the Parks and Wildlife Commission has defined the species as one “whose prospects for survival or recruitment within this state are in jeopardy.”

Further, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Fish and Wildlife Service signed a memorandum of agreement in December 2023 regarding the management of the wolves. This contract states that as the wolves are a “state endangered species,” Parks and Wildlife “would have oversight over the conservation and management of the species if gray wolves were removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species.”