To let the work of gray wolf recovery go unfinished would be a tragedy hard to tabulate. Gray wolves are a keystone species that play a critical role in the ecological health of their historic range.
Gray wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair
It had seemed for the past half century that perhaps the worst of
wolf killing was finally over. After centuries of methodic
extermination had nearly completely wiped the animals out of the
lower forty-eight, government agencies, scientists, and the general
public began to see wolves not primarily as threats to private
property, but rather, as invaluable ecological assets that
stabilized the ecosystems relied upon by many in the West.
In 1974, the gray wolf was one of the first imperiled species to
receive federal protections under the newly-passed Endangered
Species Act, As wolves were subsequently reintroduced in Yellowstone
National Park and central Idaho in the mid 1990s, and thus began
migrating to regain their historic range, they slowly began to
recover.
A series of recent events across the country make clear this work of
wolf recovery has never been in greater jeopardy. In January, the
Trump administration finalized the removal of gray wolves from the
list of animals protected under the Endangered Species Act and,
within a matter of weeks, we witnessed a disturbing new chapter in
the nation’s history of needless and irresponsible wolf killing.
In Wisconsin, just two weeks ago, over 27,000 people applied for an
ill-conceived hunt during the wolves’ mating season that, in only
three days, left 216 gray wolves dead. Shocked state officials had
to call off the hunt prematurely, but not before the three-day
slaughter led to 82 percent more wolf deaths than the state had
allocated for the entire hunting and trapping season.
Meanwhile, in Montana, a state in which wolves lost Endangered
Species Act protections in 2011, not by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service (the “Service), but by a political act of Congress, the
federal delisting emboldened the state to up its efforts to
eliminate wolves from the landscape. In the past month, the Montana
Senate passed a bill allowing for private bounties for dead wolves
and the Montana House passed a bill expanding hunting and trapping
seasons (and allowing snares) in an effort to further reduce wolf
populations. The traps and snares, which often prolong an animal’s
death, are indiscriminate and dangerous not only to wolves but also
to non-target species. In a recent six-year period in Montana, for
example, at least 350 non-target animals, ranging from mountain
lions to pet dogs, were caught in traps. Montana’s recent laws to
incentivize and further enable wolf hunting are not simply inhumane,
they severely threaten to undo gray wolf recovery efforts and
destabilize ecosystems.
These recent activities follow on the heels of a similarly
unsettling example of failed state-level wolf management in Idaho,
where wolves have also been delisted since 2011. There, over a
recent twelve-month period, trappers, hunters, and state and federal
agencies killed an astounding 570 wolves, including at least
thirty-five wolf pups as young as four weeks old. These wolves, some
of whom died of hypothermia in traps or were gunned down from
helicopters, represented nearly sixty percent of the total estimated
wolf population in the state at the end of 2019. This high number of
wolf kills directly reflect the state’s wolf policies: Idaho
recently increased the legal limit of wolves an individual can kill
in a year to thirty, and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game
currently funds wolf bounty programs in the state.
Taken together, the examples of Idaho, Wisconsin, and Montana give
us all the evidence we need that state-led management does not
ensure the protection and recovery of gray wolves.
This horrifying slaughter of wolves in just a few states—based not
on science, but on fear and hatred for a long persecuted species—is
why WildEarth Guardians has joined a broad coalition of groups
across the country to challenge the Service’s decision to delist
wolves in court. Wolves have not recovered in the West and the
decision to delist them goes against the intent of the Endangered
Species Act, which not only mandates the federal government to
forestall the extermination of gray wolves but also, crucially, to
promote their full recovery. Although this law has played an
enormous role in preventing the wholesale loss of gray wolves in the
contiguous US, its work to ensure their continued survival and
recovery, as these recent examples in Montana, Idaho, and Wisconsin
make all too clear, is far from finished.
To let the work of gray wolf recovery go unfinished would be a
tragedy hard to tabulate. Gray wolves are a keystone species that
play a critical role in the ecological health of their historic
range. Being listed under the Endangered Species Act has allowed
gray wolves to begin to rebound in the upper Great Lakes region, yet
their recovery there does nothing for the populations of gray wolves
throughout the West, where the animals remain largely absent or
underpopulated in their historic range. For example, in Oregon and
Washington, estimates indicate less than 150 wolves in each state
while in Colorado, a location in which wolves roamed across all
landscapes in the 1800s through early 1900s, has only reported
sightings of a handful of lone wolves in the last two years. The
example of success in the upper Great Lakes region should not be
used to dismantle wolf protections, but rather, to illustrate the
continued need for those protections throughout the country where
wolf populations remain extremely vulnerable. Only ongoing federal
protections, based on scientific data, will guarantee gray wolves a
continued and healthy future in this country.
As our nation reckons with its story of conquest, recent killing
sprees of gray wolves in the remote forests of Wisconsin or the
northern Rockies should not go unnoticed. The brutal and bloody
history of gray wolves—along with other native megafauna such as
bison—in our country is inextricably tied to the larger history of
colonization and violence that continues to shape our society. Our
country has a deep history of White settlers demonizing the animals
in folklore and frontier mythology and equating Native Americans to
wolves and other animals within the broader project of colonization.
Seen in this light, recent wolf hunts such as what we recently
witnessed in Wisconsin are not merely mismanaged debacles, they are
part of a much deeper, far more tragic, story. “Wolves symbolized
the frustrations and anxieties of colonization,” as historian Jon T.
Coleman has written regarding wolf history in this country, “and the
canines paid in blood for their utility as metaphor.”
As we are painfully aware, the history of colonization, and of White
frustrations and anxieties surrounding colonization, is ongoing.
Gray wolves, sadly, may continue to be part of the story. But gray
wolves, and the unsound policies and unethical practices aimed at
killing them, also present a way to dive deeper into the nation’s
history of colonization and violence in search of ways to reconsider
a better future. Wolves are “living reminders of colonization,” in
Coleman’s words, that “embody an unbroken history of conquest worth
pondering and protecting.” As the nation grapples with its history,
protecting the gray wolf is not simply about ensuring healthy
ecosystems; it is also about preserving a living historical monument
to our nation’s violent past and reaffirming a commitment to rise
above that legacy of conquest.