Gray Wolf Back On Endangered Species List
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington made the decision to overturn the Bush administration’s decision to remove gray wolves in the Great Lakes region from the endangered species list.
Environmental groups had claimed that the government misread the law last year when it called for the removal of protections for some 4,000 gray wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked a judge in Montana to return gray wolves in the Northern Rockies to the endangered list, reversing a proposal to drop them earlier this year.
"The Bush administration’s repeated attempts to push the limits of the Endangered Species Act have been decidedly rejected by the courts," said Amy Atwood, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
"In our judgment, this is an animal that deserves protection," said Howard Goldman, central states regional director for The Humane Society of the United States. "It has taken so long for their numbers to recover, we’ve got to be very careful before removing any protections from them."
Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Jason Holm admitted some disappointment at the new ruling.
"The service and our partners worked toward recovery of the gray wolf in the western Great Lakes for more than three decades" and considered the population "robust enough that it no longer needed Endangered Species Act protection," he said.
The wolf has made small steps toward a comeback in the western Great Lakes region since the late 1970s. It has migrated from Minnesota into Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Surveys this year turned up 2,921 wolves in Minnesota, at least 537 in Wisconsin and 520 in Michigan.
In a lawsuit challenging the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2007 decision, The Humane Society and several other groups claimed the government had acted illegally by designating Great Lakes wolves as a "distinct population segment" that could be bumped from the endangered list without regard to the species’ nationwide standing.
Friedman said it was unclear whether the 1973 Endangered Species Act permits such a move. He ordered the agency to provide a better explanation of its interpretation and respond to concerns that its policy could undermine the goal of protecting the wolf. In the meantime, he returned the wolf to the federal endangered list.
"Little confusion or inefficiency will result from reinstating a regulatory regime that was in place from 1978 to 2007, particularly given the fact that state and federal wolf management authorities have been working in tandem for years," the judge said in his opinion.
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