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Environmental News
Dan Gunderson

Feds agree to draft new national recovery plan for gray wolves

Wolves Versus Beavers
This May 2020 photo provided by the Voyageurs Wolf Project shows Wolf V092 during efforts to fit a GPS-collar, just south of Voyageurs National Park.
Tom Gable | Voyageurs Wolf Project via AP

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to draft a new national recovery plan for gray wolves as part of a legal settlement approved by a federal judge in the District of Columbia.

The agreement comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity.

The group had challenged the agency’s decision in 2020 to remove most gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protection. A federal court later restored wolf protections in the lower 48 states.

Wolves are currently considered a threatened species in Minnesota. That means they can only be killed in defense of human life. State and federal trappers are permitted to capture and kill wolves that threaten pets or livestock.

The settlement agreement, filed Wednesday, gives the USFWS two years to develop a draft gray wolf recovery plan, unless the agency finds that “such a plan will not promote the conservation of the species.”

“This is a big deal,” said Collette Adkins, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ve been fighting for years and years to get the Fish and Wildlife Service to finally take a national look at what the wolf really needs to recover.”

More on wolves

Adkins said the settlement will likely have the greatest impact in areas of the country where there is no gray wolf recovery plan.

She said the agency’s piecemeal approach to management, which focuses mostly on Minnesota, has neglected wolf recovery needs in western and northeastern states.

The federal government developed a regional recovery plan in 1992 for the “eastern timber wolf,” covering Minnesota and other Great Lakes states.

Adkins said a new recovery plan would update the science behind wolf management decisions for those states.

“And maybe the Fish and Wildlife Service will find that indeed wolves are recovered in this region,” she said. “But that’s a much more defensible strategy than relying on a recovery plan from 1992.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources updated the state wolf management plan last year.

The DNR said it is reviewing the settlement.

The Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment on the settlement but said it has “launched a new effort to create and foster a national dialogue around how communities can live with gray wolves.” The agency said it has hired a third party to manage that dialogue.