Mexican wolf not included in delisting effort
Recovery program is yielding results
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to delist the gray wolf as an endangered species does not include the Mexican wolf.
USFWS spokeswoman Aislinn Maestas told the Journal the Mexican wolf remained protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The USFWS Mexican Wolf Recovery Program seeks to restore the species in New Mexico and Arizona. Officials earlier this year voiced optimism about the program after the latest count showed a 12% increase in the population to 131 wolves. However, the program remains under fire, both from wildlife advocates who believe the USFWS isn’t doing enough to recover the species and from ranchers complaining about wolf attacks on their livestock.
Wildlife advocates are also unhappy with federal efforts to delist the gray wolf.
“The return of the wolf to the northern Rockies and Great Lakes is one of America’s greatest conservation successes, but wolves are still absent from much of their historic range where there is suitable habitat,” Defenders of Wildlife CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark said. “The work of recovering this iconic species is not done and we will vigorously oppose this action.”
Center for Biological Diversity Carnivore Conservation Director Collette Adkins told the Journal she hoped the USFWS would scrap the proposal, as it did in 2013.
“There are so many places where the wolves once lived where they could live again,” Adkins said, pointing to the recent wolf sightings in Colorado, the first since 2015. She said Colorado offered suitable habitat for wolves, and said keeping the protections would allow the gray wolf to repopulate the southern Rockies and other areas of the country.
The USFWS report about the gray wolf proposal calls the recovery of that species one of the nation’s “great conservation successes, with the wolf joining species such as the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, American alligator and brown pelican that have been brought back from the brink with the help of the Endangered Species Act.”
It said the gray wolf recovery was the result of more than 45 years of collaboration and partnerships with states, tribes, conservation organizations, private landowners and other federal partners.
“Many of our state and tribal partners in areas where the wolf is already delisted continue to demonstrate their ability to effectively manage their wolf populations,” the USFWS said.
Gray wolves were nearly wiped out in the lower 48 states by the mid-20th century, with the exception of northern Minnesota and Michigan’s Isle Royale.
Wolves from Canada occasionally dispersed south and successfully began recolonizing northwest Montana in 1986. In 1995 and 1996, 66 wolves from southwestern Canada were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho, the report said.
Today, the vast majority of wolves in the lower 48 exist as two large, stable or growing populations totaling more than 6,000 wolves broadly distributed across the northern portions of three states in the Great Lakes area and all or portions of five states in the northern Rocky Mountains. There are a further 12,000-14,000 wolves in eastern Canada and 15,000 in western Canada, the USFWS said.
Adkins said as many as 2 million wolves once roamed the lower 48 states. She doesn’t expect a ruling on the proposal until some time next year.