A federal judge temporarily restored endangered species status for gray wolves in the Rocky Mountains earlier this month.
The judge’s decision halted plans in three different states to hold public wolf hunts. Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho were planning wolf hunts for this fall in order to control wolf populations and reduce the number of attacks on livestock.
Back in March of this year, gray wolves were removed from the endangered species list. A decade of restoration efforts had increased the gray wolf population to around two thousand in the northern Rocky Mountains — enough of a population that they no longer needed to be considered endangered. When the wolves came off the endangered species list, many environmentalists went to work to reverse the decision. The environmentalists wanted to give the wolf population more time to continue expanding — and more importantly, time to interbreed between different groups to ensure good genetics.
Genetics played an important part in the judge’s decision. He restored the gray wolf’s protection in part because he didn’t feel that genetic exchange had taken place between wolves of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. Hunting and killing gray wolves in reaction to livestock attacks would reduce the chances that genetic exchange between wolves in the three states would occur.
Those in favor of the wolf hunt didn’t feel that the hunting would threaten the population. According to a federal biologist, as long as wolf numbers did not go below three hundred, the overall population would survive and be able to exchange genetic material between states.
The current protection for the gray wolves is only temporary — the judge will have to decide whether or not to keep the species on the endangered list or de-list them again. But for now, gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains are protected against public, state-sponsored hunts.