![]() If the new proposal is passed, Shire says there’d be no change for those areas of the wolf’s range. Then in 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service did the same with Wyoming’s wolves. In 2011, Congress passed legislation that removed federal gray wolf protections and returned management of the species back to state wildlife agencies in Idaho, Montana, eastern Washington and Oregon, and northern Utah. It’s important to remember that gray wolves have already been delisted in many places that they now occur, says Gavin Shire, a spokesperson for the U.S. (Two other lineages, the Mexican wolf and red wolf, are struggling to survive in small wild populations neither would be affected by the proposal.) State of the gray wolves Today, more than 6,000 gray wolves can be found in fragmented populations across the West and Great Lakes, thanks to a reintroduction program centered in Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s and natural colonization from Canadian packs. In fact, in the early 1900s, veterinarians deliberately infected wolves in the Greater Yellowstone region with mange-causing mites. Centuries’ worth of hunting, trapping, and poisoning erased the species from the lower 48 states by the 1930s. “I’ve been watching this for 15 years, and it’s just the same story over and over again,” says Bruskotter, who published a study in 2013 arguing against a failed federal proposal-one of many over the years-to delist the species.īefore Europeans arrived, wolves roamed over nearly every inch of what’s now the U.S. “Does that constitute recovery? It seems like a stretch to suggest that it does,” he says. range, notes Jeremy Bruskotter, a social scientist at the Ohio State University who has studied programs to save gray wolves in the United States. According to the Endangered Species Act, a plant or animal can be considered endangered when it’s no longer in “danger of extinction throughout all of a significant portion of its range.” ( See 12 of our favorite wolf pictures.)īut gray wolves occupy less than 20 percent of their historic U.S. “Today the wolf is thriving on its vast range, and it is reasonable to conclude it will continue to do so in the future.”įor one, that definition is up for debate. Department of the Interior, said in an emailed statement. “The facts are clear and indisputable-the gray wolf no longer meets the definition of a threatened or endangered species,” David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced. After four decades of intense conservation efforts, it’s finally time to take the gray wolf off the Endangered Species List, the U.S.
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