REGIONAL— The on-again, off-saga of the gray wolf and its federal status under the Endangered Species Act appears to be on-again. A federal district in the Northern District of California, ruled late last week that the Trump administration erred when the Fish and Wildlife Service removed the wolf from threatened or endangered status in the lower 48 states.
While the FWS cited the wolf’s successful recovery in the Great Lakes states, including Minnesota, and the northern Rockies, the judge found that federal officials failed to consider the impact of the delisting on wolves in other parts of the lower 48 states.
The Biden administration had argued in court in favor of the Trump era decision to delist the wolf, but the court disagreed anyway.
The decision, once again, takes management of the gray wolf out of the hands of state governments, including Minnesota’s. It’s likely to head off pending legislation that would have required the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to hold a wolf hunt later this year.
The DNR had held off on a hunt last year, after the FWS announced the wolf’s delisting, but that DNR decision had rankled some northern Minnesota lawmakers who want to see at least a limited harvest of the state’s wolf population. Minnesota has, by far, the largest wolf population in the lower 48 states, with an estimated population of about 2,700 animals.