Saving the Gray Wolf

The Center for Biological Diversity published an article titled “Saving the Gray Wolf” that articulates and defends their litigations concerning wolves.  They describe the 2011 rider to “must pass” budget legislation that “stripped Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in all of Montana and Idaho, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon, and a small portion of northern Utah” and cite this as “an unprecedented action that, for the first time in the history of the Act, removed a species from the endangered list by political fiat instead of science.”  They also critique the 2013 proposal by the Obama Administration “to strip Endangered Species Act protections from gray wolves across the rest of the lower 48 states outside the Southwest, where the Mexican gray wolf was struggling to survive….”  This change is based on two premises: that gray wolves are now established in certain states in the west and it is not the duty nor does the USFWS with its limited resources have the ability to reestablish wolves across the nation. I discuss these issues in my book, Wildlife Politics in detail.  See the Center for Biological Diversity’s full statement at http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/gray_wolves/