On Sept. 9, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation (SAF) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for failing to respond to their petitions to downlist West Coast wolves to threatened and to delist gray wolves in the Western Great Lakes under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
“Today, we’re making good on our promise to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service for its failure to timely respond to our petitions in accordance with the ESA,” said Michael Jean, Litigation Counsel at the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation. “Unsurprisingly, the agency has asked us on multiple occasions to refrain from bringing this suit. But we will never refrain from holding agencies accountable to their statutory mandates to scientifically manage wildlife.”
In June 2023, SAF as well as The Michigan Bear Hunters Association, Upper Peninsula Bear Houndsmen Association and Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, filed two petitions with FWS. The first petition requests that FWS recognize and delist wolves in Western Great Lakes states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota (including areas in adjoining states). There are currently more than 4,000 gray wolves in these three states. This includes estimates of 2,700 wolves in Minnesota, 1,000 in Wisconsin, and more than 600 in Michigan. FWS’ original recovery goals for the species was 1,400 for Minnesota and a minimum combined population of 100 wolves for Michigan and Wisconsin together. The second petition asks FWS to downlist West Coast wolves — wolves in Western Washington, Western Oregon and California — from endangered to threatened. The agency ignored these petitions for over a year, and on July 2, 2024, SAF notified FWS of intention to sue the agency for this failure.
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The ESA has a clear petition process: FWS must issue a preliminary 90-day finding on the petitions and make a final decision within one year. “FWS has done neither, and we’re happy to remind them that the ESA’s provisions are not optional,” said Torin Miller, Associate Litigation Counsel at SAF.
