Litigation Update: SCI Continues to Defend Science-Based Decision-Making for Gray Wolves

Last week, SCI filed its final brief in three lawsuits in which anti—hunting groups seek to put recovered gray wolf populations back on the Endangered Species Act list.  That concept is absurd.  Wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have far exceeded recovery goals and their populations have grown substantially since they were removed from the ESA by Congress in 2009.  But animal rights groups will not stop until they see these large, healthy wolf populations back under federal control.  SCI has fought this battle for over 20 years.  We continue to fight.

SCI’s brief emphasized that wolf populations in the Western U.S. are healthy and expanding.  It emphasized that changes in state law, prompted by frustration with the impact that wolves have on livestock and prey populations like deer and moose, do not threaten these wolves.  And it pointed out legal deficiencies in the plaintiffs’ arguments.

SCI is defending the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision not to relist these wolves in partnership with Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.  SCI also recently completed briefing in another legal challenge involving gray wolves, where we partnered with the NRA.

In that case, SCI and the NRA appealed a California district court’s ruling that rejected the Service’s removal of wolves across the lower 48 States from the ESA’s coverage.  That California court, like a number of courts before it, did not find fault in the science underlying the Service’s decision.  Rather, the court held technical issues with the ESA kept wolves under federal management.  But no one—not even the plaintiffs in these lawsuits—can deny that wolves are biologically recovered in their primary habitat in the lower 48 States.

SCI has defended the delisting of gray wolves in at least 16 cases since 2003.  Litigation has for decades kept the country’s largest wolf populations under federal control.  That has caused significant damage to deer and other wildlife across the Great Lakes states.  It has led to significant loss of livestock and even pets and hunting dogs.  Ever expanding and unmanaged wolf populations benefit no one—except the animal rights groups that fundraise off photographs of wolves and hyperbole that wolf populations will be “exterminated” under state management.

For these reasons, and many more, over 100 SCI members took to Capitol Hill on May 15.  SCI members lobbied for the “Pet and Livestock Protection Act,” which will mandate the reissuance of a final rule removing the gray wolf in the lower 48 States from the ESA lists.  Passage of the act will assist in proper administration of the ESA.  It will allow the Service to focus its limited resources on species of much greater conservation concern.

SCI is unique among pro-hunting clubs in having in-house legal counsel, ready to go to court to defend science-based decisions when it comes to gray wolves and other species.  SCI’s legal team, as well as our state and federal lobbyists, will continue to push for the removal of wolves from the ESA lists.  And we know our members will continue to stand with us in this longtime effort!