SAVING NORTHERN ROCKIES WOLVES
Trapped, poisoned and shot for “predator control,” gray wolves were nearly eliminated from the U.S. West by 1945. Today, after centuries of unfounded fear and animosity, research has given wolves a new image as social and smart creatures with an indispensable role in ecosystems — and Endangered Species Act protection gave them a new chance to thrive. But these beautiful carnivores are still persecuted by the livestock industry and trophy hunters. And now all wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains have been removed from the endangered species list, even though they have a long way to go before full recovery.
OUR CAMPAIGN
Fighting for Federal Protection
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho helped make a conservation success story for wolves in the northern Rockies region — which encompasses Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the eastern third of Oregon and Washington, and a tiny part of Utah. With the growth of that population, wolves dispersed to the Pacific Northwest and from there to California. Wolves from the northern Rockies have also traveled to Colorado and other parts of Utah, where hundreds of wolves could once again live.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded to initial recovery progress in the northern Rockies with premature efforts to strip them of the lifesaving protection of the Endangered Species Act. In 2003 the Fish and Wildlife Service “downlisted” wolves across the West from endangered to the less-protective threatened status. After a lawsuit by the Center and allies, their endangered standing was restored.
Undeterred, the Fish and Wildlife Service again moved to remove northern Rockies wolves’ federal protection, finalizing a rule in 2009 removing that protection altogether. The Center and allies filed suit again, and in 2010 a judge reinstated protection, preventing wolf hunting from going forward in Montana and Idaho.
But the fight was just starting. Despite that court’s order to reinstate the wolves’ prematurely removed Endangered Species Act protection, a 2011 congressional rider on a must-pass budget bill again stripped their protection anyway. The rider removed protection from wolves in all of Montana and Idaho, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon, and a small part of northern Utah. This unprecedented action was the first time in the Endangered Species Act’s history that a species was removed from the endangered list by political fiat instead of science.
And in 2012 the Fish and Wildlife Service removed federal protection from wolves in Wyoming, leaving wolves without federal safeguards across the northern Rockies region.
That means it’s up to the states to manage wolves — and it’s been a bloodbath, with hundreds of wolves killed each year in some of the cruelest ways possible. Montana allows bait and strangulation snares, while Idaho hires private wolf-killing contractors and lets hunters chase wolves down with hounds and ATVs. And across most of Wyoming, hunters can kill wolves without a license, by almost any means at any time.
We petitioned to restore northern Rockies wolves’ federal protection in 2021. Three years later, after another Center lawsuit, the Service rejected our petition, even while its own scientists admitted that rampant wolf-killing under state laws could reduce the region’s wolf population by 75%.
So in 2024 the Center and allies took the agency back to court. We won’t give up till northern Rockies wolves have the Endangered Species Act protection they need to survive.
Other Northern Rockies Wolf Work
As we fight for northern Rockies wolves’ protection, we’re also working nonstop to confront the threats they face. In Idaho we’ve filed litigation challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services' killing of gray wolves in the state, are working to fight back aggressive trapping proposals, and have called on the U.S. Forest Service to prohibit Idaho from paying private contractors to shoot wolves from aircraft in national forests. In Montana we’ve advocated for limiting trapping along the borders of Yellowstone National Park and supported legislative bills that would limit how wolves are killed. And in Washington, thanks to a petition by the Center and allies, the governor has ordered the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to draft new rules to guide when wolves can be killed for conflict with livestock and prioritize using nonlethal methods of conflict deterrence over killing wolves.
Despite these ongoing efforts at the state level, wolves continue to be persecuted at increasingly high levels across the northern Rockies. We’ll continue to fight for wolves and push for science — not politics — to be the basis of wolf conservation in the region.
Saving Gray Wolves Nationwide
Meanwhile we’re also defending all other U.S. gray wolves. In fall 2020 the Trump administration finalized its decision to remove federal protection from every gray wolf in the contiguous United States (except the Southwest’s small population of Mexican gray wolves, listed separately under the Act). The Center and allies immediately filed suit, and in early 2022 a federal court vacated the delisting rule and restored wolves’ protection across the lower 48 states — except in the northern Rockies.
This protection remains necessary, since the three main populations — in the northern Rockies, upper Midwest and Southwest — are disconnected and genetically isolated. To spur true, nationwide gray wolf recovery, in 2010 the Center petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service for a national recovery plan to establish wolf populations in suitable habitat in the West Coast states, the northern and southern Rockies, the Midwest, and the Northeast. In 2023 we secured a legal agreement effectively requiring the Service to draft that plan within two years.