Lawsuit Seeks To Maintain Federal Gray Wolf Protections

An environmental group has sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to preserve federal protections for gray wolves and force the agency to develop a national recovery plan for the species.

The Minnesota-based Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, a day after the service denied the group’s petition for a nationwide recovery plan. The service said its regional approach meets the legal requirements.

But the group said the agency is required under the Endangered Species Act to foster the recovery of gray wolf populations across their former range, not just in the northern Rockies, the Great Lakes region and the southwest.

Collette Adkins, a lawyer for the center, said while the Fish and Wildlife Service successfully developed wolf recovery plans for the three separate areas, it never rolled out a nationwide plan.

“The agency just decided it would be OK if we just had wolves in these three regions,” Adkins said. “Mexican wolves in the southwest. Northern Rocky Mountain wolves, and the Great Lakes wolves. That wasn’t good enough then. It’s not good enough now.”

She said because no nationwide plan was ever put in place, wolves are still absent from large swaths of ideal wolf habitat.

“What we’ve seen is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to remove all protections from wolves nationwide,” Adkins said. “Our lawsuit argues that the Fish and Wildlife Service can’t remove wolf protections until they’ve recovered wolves nationwide.”

Congress lifted federal protections for northern Rockies wolves, but courts have blocked efforts to lift them in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

The Department of Justice said it’s reviewing the complaint and has no further comment.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:40 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, with additional reporting from MPR News.