US won't restore protections for wolves in Rocky Mountains

Federal wildlife officials on Friday rejected requests from conservation groups to restore protections for gray wolves across the northern U.S. Rocky Mountains, saying the predators are in no danger of extinction as some states seek to reduce their numbers through hunting.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also said it would work on a national recovery plan for wolves, after previously pursuing a piecemeal recovery in different regions of the country. The agency expects to complete work on the plan by December 2025.

The rejection of the conservation groups' petitions allows state-sanctioned wolf hunts to continue in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Federal officials estimated the wolf population in the region that also includes Washington, California and Oregon stood at nearly 2,800 animals at the end of 2022.

“The population maintains high genetic diversity and connectivity, further supporting their ability to adapt to future changes,” the agency said in a statement.

Conservationists who say wolves remain imperiled after coming back from near-extinction last century blasted the decision, complaining that Idaho and Montana have approved increasingly aggressive wolf-killing measures including trapping, snaring and months-long hunting seasons.

“We are disappointed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is refusing to hold the states accountable to wolf conservation commitments they made a decade ago,” said Susan Holmes, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition.

Antipathy toward wolves for killing livestock and big game dates to early European settlement of the American West in the 1800s, and it flared up again after wolf populations rebounded under federal protection. That recovery has brought bitter blowback from hunters and farmers angered over wolf attacks on big game herds and livestock. They contend protections are no longer warranted.

Congress in 2011 stripped Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the Northern Rockies region.

The Trump administration removed Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across the remainder of the U.S. just before the he left office in 2020. But a federal judge in 2022 restored protections outside of the Northern Rockies.