Conservationists have been worried for years that endangered gray wolves continue to face obstacles to their recovery in the lower 48 states. But at least one federal agency—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)—does not seem to share the conservation community's concern. The USFWS recently issued permits to the Michigan and Wisconsin Departments of Natural Resources that allow the states to kill up to 54 gray wolves annually, 20 in Michigan and 34 in Wisconsin.
The collective jaw of scientists and wolf advocates around the country fell to the floor, not only because of USFWS's willingness to allow the killing of 54 gray wolves when only 3,700 are thought to remain in the lower 48 states, but also because of the agency's swift sidestepping of the law.
In authorizing the killing, the USFWS blithely ignored federal law that requires the agency to seek and consider outside input. The Endangered Species Act requires the USFWS to provide notice and an opportunity for the public, including scientific experts, to comment on the permit applications prior to issuing them. By including this requirement in the act, Congress recognized the sensitivity of a decision to kill endangered animals—and the necessity of consulting experts and the general public when making a decision that affects our nation’s most imperiled wildlife.
The HSUS and a broad coalition of more than a dozen other organizations have banded together to fight the USFWS's inhumane and illegal actions. On Thursday, August 4, we jointly filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn the USFWS’s decisions. The suit claims that the agency's actions are in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). The suit seeks to suspend the wolf-killing permits until the agency fully complies with the requirements of the ESA.
“These permits are not only based on bad science, but are also entirely at odds with both the letter and spirit of the Endangered Species Act,” explains Jonathan Lovvorn, vice president of animal protection litigation for The HSUS. “Before making a decision to authorize the killing of an endangered species, the agency should be doing extra outreach and consultation with the public and wolf experts, not shirking the minimum process required by the ESA.”
Adds Dr. John Grandy, senior vice president of The HSUS's wildlife programs: “The agency’s decision to authorize the killing of endangered wolves without public notice and comment undermines the efforts of scientists, wolf advocates, and public interest organizations that have worked for years to protect these animals. The intentional killing of an endangered species is a drastic step, and one that should never be taken without first soliciting and carefully considering expert views about whether lethal control is really necessary.”
Why Kill Wolves?
The Michigan and Wisconsin DNRs are seeking the permits for one reason: to kill wolves who sometimes prey on livestock. Although there are numerous effective non-lethal means for preventing wolf predation, the USFWS permits do not require livestock owners to implement these methods prior to allowing the state DNRs to use lethal control. In other words, wolves may be killed whether or not ranchers have taken common-sense steps to protect their livestock using sound husbandry techniques or other non-lethal tools.
To make matters worse, the permits do not even target the individual wolves who are allegedly causing livestock losses. Instead, the permits simply authorize the Michigan and Wisconsin DNRs to set traps near where a wolf has been documented to prey on cattle. The traps, of course, will snap their steely jaws on any wolf, or other animal, who wanders through the targeted area, regardless of the animal's role in a previous predation. What's more, given the fact that state and federal wildlife managers have no hard data on the extent of illegal wolf killings, they have no way to gauge accurately whether the permitted killings, in combination with the illegal ones, would impact the population.
Wolf advocates are particularly concerned because USFWS has attempted to justify the killing permits under a section of the ESA designed to authorize actions that would “enhance the propagation or survival of the species.” In effect, the agency is claiming that it is shooting gray wolves to save the gray wolf, an Orwellian spin that has wildlife advocates worrying about how this distorted interpretation may be applied in the future.
"The agency’s reliance on this section of the ESA to issue permits to kill an endangered species represents not only a setback for gray wolf recovery, but also a dangerous precedent for endangered species recovery in general," says The HSUS's Lovvorn.
The fact is that, under the ESA, lethal management of an endangered species is allowed only as a last-resort, and even then only under the strictest controls and after a public review process. By allowing killing permits without the mandatory public comment period, Lovvorn notes, the USFWS is not only failing to abide by the letter of the ESA, but it is opening an entirely new chapter in federal wildlife management, wherein the decision to kill an endangered species struggling to recover is given no more consideration than any other day-to-day wildlife management decision.
They've Earned Their ESA Status
Gray wolves have come about their ESA protections the hard way—after being the victims of ruthless killings for decades. The gray wolf and red wolf once ranged throughout the United States, in numbers thought to be near 400,000 for the two species combined. But from the moment European settlers stepped foot on North America, they began large-scale eradication efforts. Federally funded eradication programs, which lasted through the mid-1900s, employed bounties, poisons, trapping, and aerial shooting. They succeeded in extirpating wolves from all of the lower 48 states except Minnesota, where a tiny remnant population sought refuge in the Northwoods.
The gray wolf finally earned protections under the ESA in 1974, but those protections have constantly been under attack by livestock and hunting interests. In fact, the USFWS's recent decision to allow the killing of gray wolves in Michigan and Wisconsin is not the agency's first attempt to undermine the species' ESA protections.
On April 1, 2003, the USFWS downlisted the status of most gray wolves in the lower 48 states from endangered to threatened, thereby reducing their protections under the act. In response, The HSUS joined with other wildlife protection organizations to challenge the USFWS decision in federal court. On January 31 of this year, the U.S. District Court in Oregon ruled that the downlisting was not based on sound science, and promptly vacated the USFWS's decision.
Because of that court opinion, most wolves in the lower 48 states, including those in Michigan and Wisconsin, are again listed as endangered, and are granted broad protections under the ESA. In Minnesota, the gray wolf continues to be listed as threatened. In other limited areas, the gray wolf is considered “experimental nonessential,” a classification assigned to reintroduced populations that provides less protection than endangered status.
"There is no question that gray wolves need their endangered species status under the ESA, given the small number of wolves who live in the lower 48 states," says The HSUS's Grandy. "It is the intention of our lawsuit to ensure that the USFWS lives up to its obligation to both endangered species and the public, which look to the ESA and the USFWS to ensure the survival and recovery of the most imperiled members of our ecological community."
