Judge orders U.S. to decide if wolverines need protection
BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal judge has given U.S. wildlife officials 18 months to decide if wolverines should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, following years of dispute over how much risk climate change and other threats pose to the rare and elusive predators.
The order from U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy comes after environmentalists challenged a 2020 decision under the Trump administration to withhold protections for the animals in the lower 48 states, where no more than 300 of the animals are thought to remain.
Environmentalists argued that wolverines face localized extinction as a result of climate change, habitat fragmentation and low genetic diversity. Warming temperatures are expected to diminish the mountain snowpack that wolverines rely on to dig dens to birth and raise their young.
The Fish and Wildlife Service received a petition to protect wolverines in 2000 and first proposed protections in 2010. It later sought to withdraw that proposal, but was blocked by a federal judge who said the snow-dependent animals were “squarely in the path of climate change.”
The 2020 rejection of protections under former President Donald Trump was based on research suggesting the animals’ prevalence was expanding, not contracting. Officials at the time predicted enough snow would persist at high elevations for wolverines to den in mountain snowfields each spring despite warming temperatures.
Government attorneys in February told Molloy that wildlife officials wanted to re-evaluate the 2020 decision and asked that it stay in effect while that review was completed. But the judge rejected that request and struck down the decision.