Although conservationists are celebrating a legal victory this week in their fight to restore protections for wolves in the West, wolves remain under state control in Idaho, where hunting and trapping remain legal, Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials said Thursday.
The issue involves a new ruling in a lawsuit filed earlier this year in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. This week, conservationists told the Idaho Capital Sun they filed the lawsuit seeking additional protections for wolves in part because of the expansion of wolf hunting and trapping in states like Idaho.
In 2021, the Idaho Legislature passed, and Gov. Brad Little signed into law, Senate Bill 1211, which eliminated limits on the number of wolf tags hunters could purchase every year, allowed the state to enter into contracts with other government agencies and third parties to kill wolves and legalized trapping on private land year round.
Wolves are a native species that were nearly driven to extinction in the Western U.S. by the 1930s following a campaign of government bounties and widespread poisoning.
Recovery took decades. Wolves were one of the first animals added to the Endangered Species List in 1974. Then, the U.S. government reintroduced wolves to Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996 using wolves captured in Canada, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported.
But in 2011, the U.S. Congress removed wolves in Idaho, Montana and parts of other Western states from the Endangered Species Act, setting the stage for hunting, trapping and state management of wolves.
Judge’s ruling in lawsuit is ‘a huge victory for wolves’ and science, conservationists say
Conservationists said they filed the new lawsuit because they worried wolves are once again in danger of being driven to dangerously low population levels.
“States represent they want to maintain a smaller population of wolves,” Western Watersheds Project Idaho Director Greg LeDonne said in a phone interview. “The concern raised in comments the plaintiffs submitted and in this case is that low populations put wolves at risk of being extirpated again, driven to extinction in the West, and put back in the same position.”
On Tuesday, Montana Fourth District Judge Donald Molloy ruled in favor of the conservationists and tossed out a decision from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that found wolves in the Western United States do not qualify for Endangered Species Act protections.
“It’s a huge victory for wolves, for science and fact and for the many organizations and individuals who worked on this for literally decades in some cases,” Patrick Kelly, the Montana and Washington director for Western Watersheds Project, said in a phone interview.
Although the ruling itself does not change the status or protections of wolves in Idaho, one of the lead attorneys on the case said the ruling is a clear victory for wolves and conservationists.
“Judge Molloy wholly rejected nearly every argument put forth by the Fish and Wildlife Service in their briefs and oral arguments,” Kate Schultz, senior attorney for the Center for a Humane Economy and a lead counsel in the case, said in a written statement. “This decision was a thorough repudiation of the agency’s handling of wolves, and it is a continuation of a long pattern of cases in which courts have found that the federal government has violated federal law and failed to properly protect wolves in the United States.”
Several plaintiffs said they hope the ruling represents a step toward adding additional protections for wolves and allowing wolves to recover to the point they return to playing their original, natural role in ecosystems.
Idaho Department Fish and Game and Gov. Brad Little’s spokesperson disagree with new wolf ruling
Idaho Department of Fish and Game Director Jim Fredericks and Gov. Little’s spokeswoman disagreed with the ruling and said the courts should stay out of local wolf management decisions.
“We’re extremely disappointed with the decision considering Idaho has managed a wolf population above federal recovery goals for decades and sustained more-than-adequate wolf populations since Congress removed them from Endangered Species Act protection in 2011,” Fredericks said in a written statement.
Fish and Game officials said Idaho’s most recent wolf population estimate for May 2024 is 1,235 wolves, which they said is above the recovery goal of 150 wolves.
Little’s office also disagreed with the ruling and called Molloy an activist judge.
“This ruling is yet another example of an activist judge using the Endangered Species Act to harm Western states,” Press Secretary Joan Varsek said in a written statement late Wednesday. “While Congress and the Trump administration work on necessary reforms to the ESA, we are doubling down and reaffirming that state management of wolves has worked for this recovered population. Idaho is and will continue to be a leader in these efforts.”
Although wolves’ status in Idaho did not change with the ruling, Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials said Thursday morning the case and its fallout could potentially lead to changes for wolves in Idaho.
“Idaho could eventually be affected because the court case involves the (Endangered Species Act) status of wolves across the Western U.S. where there’s a mix of federally protected wolves – and federally unprotected wolves – depending on which state they’re in,” Fish and Game officials wrote in a press release.
“We monitor wolves and continue to manage them in accordance with our management plan to ensure the population exceeds federal recovery criteria while staying within the ecological and social carrying capacity of Idaho,” Fredericks said in a written statement. “Wolves are polarizing, and some people simply don’t believe wolves should be hunted or trapped at all. Where we have sustainable populations, we believe those decisions should be left to the states, and not dictated by the federal government or the courts.”
What led to the lawsuit seeking protections for wolves in the West?
The case originated from the Western Watersheds Project and several other conservation groups filing a lawsuit in January.
Conservationists filed the lawsuit after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected their petition to provide protections for wolves after states including Idaho worked to decrease the wolf population by expanding wolf hunting and trapping, by eliminating the limit on wolf tags hunters could purchase and by allowing the state to enter into contracts with government agencies and third parties to kill wolves.
Ghost wolves: As Idaho aims to reduce its wolf population, advocates worry counts aren’t accurate
“If you look at Idaho Code, in 2011 the Idaho Legislature declared a disaster emergency concerning wolves, and that sort of anti-wolf hysteria or even paranoia has driven Idaho’s policies since that point,” LeDonne of the Western Watersheds Project said in a phone interview. “It’s become progressively more anti-wolf, and it’s really seeking to drive the population down to an unsustainable level.”
Kelly, who is also with Western Watersheds Project, said state governments are resurrecting some of the tools and policies that originally led to killing off wolves in the West.
“One big indication is that Idaho and now Montana have instituted bounty systems where private individuals get reimbursed for killing wolves,” Kelly said. “That is a practice from the 1800s that has been resurrected – driven by fear mongering and anti-wolf hysteria in state legislatures in Idaho, Montana and elsewhere – where armchair biologists step in to make decisions about wolves that have nothing to do with ecology or wildlife biology.”
In previous interviews with the Idaho Capital Sun, Idaho Fish and Game officials were adamant their program is a reimbursement program designed to help hunters who successfully and legally kill a wolf recover costs for things like licenses, ammo, guns, fuel or even an all-terrain vehicle used for hunting wolves, and not a bounty.
Moving forward, Molloy’s ruling throws out the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s previous decision and sends it back to Fish and Wildlife to reconsider.
Kelly said the ruling means Fish and Wildlife must issue a new decision that reflects the latest science and concerns raised in the lawsuit.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has the right to appeal Molloy’s ruling.
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.