Feb 12, 2025

Contact: Susan Holmes- (202)329-1553 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, reports emerged that Donald Trump has nominated former Wyoming Game and Fish Director Brian Nevsik as the next Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Nesvik’s nomination has been referred to the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the federal agency charged with protecting endangered species and migratory birds and manages nearly 860 million acres of national wildlife refuges. Roughly 8,000 people work to carry out its mission to “conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats…”

Statement by Susan Holmes, Executive Director 

“Nesvik’s nomination is devastating news for wildlife and endangered species. During his time as Director of Wyoming Fish and Game, he repeatedly called for weakening the Endangered Species Act, oversaw a 50% increase in hunting tags for mountain lions and black bears, and testified before the U.S. Congress that grizzly bears should lose endangered species protections, “by whatever means is necessary.” Last year, his Commission received global condemnation for imposing only a minimal fine when a Wyoming man used a snowmobile to run down and brutally torture a young female wolf. There is no doubt that if confirmed as Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he will do the Trump Administration’s bidding to advance unchecked drilling, mining, and logging of fragile wildlife habitats. He will sacrifice our precious endangered species for industry profits at every turn. It will be a war on wildlife that will wreak havoc on the protection and recovery of species from grizzlies to sea turtles to monarch butterflies.”

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On February 28th of this year–just 26 days after the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service denied gray wolves protections–Cody Roberts of Daniel Wyoming tortured and killed a female yearling gray wolf after running her down with a snowmobile and taping her mouth shut.

This abhorrent act of cruelty cannot become normal or acceptable. The wildlife that you and I fight for every day face enough threats from habitat loss, climate change, and over consumption by lawful hunters. Torture cannot be added to that already-grave list.

Share this story to build pressure on decision-makers to act.

While this disgusting action likely shocks you as much as it does me, Mr. Roberts is currently facing a mere $250 fine for possessing a live wild animal. To put a fine point on that: running a wolf to exhaustion with a snowmobile and incapacitating her, taping her mouth shut, parading the still-live wolf around a bar, and finally killing and skinning her do not violate state law. Only the possession of the live animal is a low-level infraction.

Wyoming’s Governor,¹ the local sheriff,² the Director of the state’s fish and wildlife agency, and former U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) Director Dan Ashe³ have issued statements condemning this brutal attack. But to date, the current Director of the USFWS, Martha Williams, and her boss, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, have had no comment.

The USFWS could have prevented this. We worked for more than two years to organize support for the protection of gray wolves in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana under the Endangered Species Act.⁴ Scientists, legal experts, activists, biologists, and Tribal representatives advocated to Secretary Haaland and Director Williams in support of protection.

And let’s be clear: Wyoming’s designated “predator zone,” 85 percent of the state where wolves can be shot on sight (without even a hunting license,) should never have been approved by the USFWS as an acceptable wolf management plan. Such a classification sends a message to the public that state wildlife officials consider wolves a pest and enables the type of horrific treatment of wolves that we witnessed last week.

As I wrote above, their decision to deny those crucial safeguards preceded this act of cowardly torture by just 26 days. I do not know if Mr. Roberts felt empowered by the USFWS deciding that these wolves did not warrant protection–but I do know that the agency could have acted before it and it can surely act now.

Today, I am asking you to share this story. The more people who know what happened to this wolf, the more the Administration will feel pressure to act. Please post to social media or share this story with a friend.

We will be in touch soon with additional actions that we can all take to protect wolves in the Northern Rockies and Colorado from similar acts of torture.

Thank you for your commitment to wildlife and wild places.

Sincerely,

PS. Are the links not working? Please take action to share this story on this page: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/wolves-are-not-safe

1. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/04/08/gov-gordon-joins-outrage-over-torment-of-wyoming-wolf/

2. https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/2024-04-08/wolfs-capture-alleged-abuse-by-wyoming-man-condemned-highlights-legal-limitations

3. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/10/wyoming-wolf-bar-animal-abuse

4. https://www.endangered.org/statement-of-endangered-species-coalition-on-todays-announcement-by-the-u-s-fish-and-wildlife-service-to-deny-federal-protections-to-gray-wolves-in-the-northern-rockies/

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Increased hunting and trapping resulted in the killing of 257 wolves in Wisconsin in 2013, up from 117 in 2012. This left the state with somewhere between 650 and 700 wolves statewide. That number is down from nearly 850 in 2012.

In its federally-approved management plan, the state established a minimum of 350 wolves, yet the Walker administration appears to be targeting that as a goal. The piece quotes the president of the Wisconsin Bowhunters Association saying, “Our group wants the wolf numbers to be at or below 350 as soon as possible.”

The state estimates there are 794,000 deer  in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Bowhunters Association surely can’t view a mere 600 wolves as a threat to their ability to find a deer. (The total deer population is reportedly 1.4m, 794,000 is the state’s goal. -ed)

In addition to pursuing an unsustainable management strategy, Wisconsin has claimed the unsavory position of being the sole state that allows the use dogs to hunt wolves.

These decisions aren’t being made without outside input. Until recently, Wisconsin’s “Wolf Advisory Committee” included representatives from the conservation and animal welfare community in addition to other stakeholders. That changed last year when the committee was rechartered, leaving mostly pro-hunting and trapping groups to advise the state on how best to manage wolves. As evidenced by the marked decline, the result is an unsustainable set of policies.

Like Idaho and other Northern Rockies states, Wisconsin is demonstrating to the nation what awaits wolves when Endangered Species Act protections are lifted. Secretary Jewell’s planned nationwide delisting would expose nearly all of the nation’s wolves to reckless pro-hunting policies like these. You can email Secretary Jewell and urge that she maintain protections for wolves here.

The post Wisconsin Wolf Population Plummets appeared first on Endangered Species Coalition.

Interior Secretary Jewell and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service seemingly would, as they are attempting to declare virtually all of the nation’s gray wolves recovered and strip them of Endangered Species Act protections. When wolves were placed on the Endangered Species List in 1974, there was no mention of bringing them back in just a handful of states and then walking away.

Still, that’s just what the FWS is purporting to do. The agency is currently accepting public comments through December 17 on a proposed rule that would remove existing Endangered Species Act protections from virtually all gray wolves in the lower 48 states.

Wolves once roamed much of the continental U.S., but in the late nineteenth century they were driven from their native habitats by westward expansion. Ranchers and the governments that supported them employed sometimes-barbaric methods to kill wolves to free up space for grazing livestock.

As the decades passed, naturalists and conservationists began to see the effects that the removal of keystone species has on landscapes. Ungulate herds  became less healthy and vegetation was over- grazed. Even streams in areas once occupied by wolves felt the impact of their disappearance. Where there were once trees giving these waters shade, clearings emerged causing water temperatures to rise.

In the 1990’s an effort was finally made to begin to correct the damage our forefathers had unknowingly done when wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies. This was the beginning of one of our nation’s proudest conservation success stories. This amazing story of nature’s ability to right itself if we let it is at real risk of failure if this proposal to abandon wolves becomes a reality.

Wolves are desperately trying to expand, with one recently wandering south from Minnesota, through Iowa, eventually finding his way into Missouri. Once there, he found himself in the sights of a hunter who claims he thought he’d stumbled on a very large coyote and shot him dead. A similar story played out not long after in Kentucky.

And another wolf, named OR-7, or “Journey” by his ardent fan base, was fitted with a radio collar after being born into an Oregon wolf pack. He traveled across the state, into California, and back. His epic trek made him the first wolf in the state of California in nearly a century. But without Endangered Species Act protections, Journey could have been shot, trapped, or even clubbed to death without any legal recourse.

Expansion of wolves depends completely on their ability to have safe passage into new habitats. Removing the very protections that allowed wolves in Yellowstone and the Western Great Lakes to recover would nearly guarantee that wolves never get a foothold in the rest of the nation.

Alarmingly, that may be what the FWS would prefer. The Service’s proposal is clearly not being driven by science—scores of experts in carnivorous species have spoken out opposing this rule. Several were even barred from participation on a federally-mandated peer review for having voiced their concern. The FWS later reversed course and is now reviewing its own review process, but the underlying reality remains—the science does not support walking away from wolves.

Sally Jewel, the current Secretary of the Department of the Interior, the department that houses FWS, has spoken frequently of her desire to see children enjoying our country’s wilderness areas. It’s in these areas, though, that the continued absence of keystone species like wolves is being felt the most. If Secretary Jewell truly wishes to see healthy landscapes for future generations, she will listen to the rising chorus of scientists and hundreds of thousands of wildlife advocates that have urged that she and FWS leave existing Endangered Species Act protections in place.

In short, Secretary Jewell and the FWS need to finish the job before declaring “mission accomplished” and moving on.

This post originally appeared on TakePart.com.

The post Mission Unaccomplished: Finish the Job on Wolves appeared first on Endangered Species Coalition.

The wolf aptly named “Journey” (or OR-7 to use the name that biologists gave him), was born in Oregon and traveled on a long solo trek that put him west of the Cascades and into California. This spectacular moment marked the first time that a wolf had entered California in nearly a century. And Journey wouldn’t have had that chance were it not for protections provided under the Endangered Species Act.

A wolf in the western Great Lakes region recently departed Minnesota and set off on his own expansion, traveling through Iowa and into Missouri. The wolf was promptly shot by a hunter who had mistaken it for a coyote. Tragic as that tale is, it shows that wolves are slowly trying to come back. In so doing, they’re demonstrating an amazing conservation success story.

So why walk away now? Wolves in the eastern United States, southern Rocky Mountains, and elsewhere are still recovering. Without the protections of the Endangered Species Act, states will be free to manage their populations in any way they see fit. We’ve seen several examples of state management in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. With few exceptions, these states are all allowing for the killing of wolves to the maximum extent possible without triggering relisting under the act.

The job of bringing wolves back is both an awe-inspiring story of success, and a task not yet complete. Walking away now, as FWS has proposed to do, would imperil the resources and efforts extended to date to recover this iconic species.

The FWS is taking public comments on this proposal until the 11th of September. Please make your voice heard today.

The post Wolves Under Attack appeared first on Endangered Species Coalition.

Although I’ve skied, hiked and climbed extensively through wolverine country in the Northern Rockies over the years (think: mountainous terrain, above and below treeline), I’ve never actually been fortunate enough to spot one of these fearsome critters. Once, while skiing in the Tetons in western Wyoming, I came across a researcher who was setting a wolverine trap in order to live-capture and collar a wolverine for research. The trap was constructed of small logs and thick branches, and looked like a miniature log cabin about the size of a doghouse. I’ve since heard that wolverines’ teeth and claws are so sharp and strong, that they have been known to chew and tear their way out of these timber fortresses.

Two years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) declared that the last few wolverines in the continental United States should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, but that the Service had higher priorities at the time. Thus, these ferocious members of the weasel family earned the dubious designation of “warranted, but precluded” from federal protection.

The fate of the wolverine changed on February 1st, when the USFWS declared that the wolverine would finally be protected throughout its range in the lower 48 states.

Although wolverines are plentiful in Canada and Alaska, scientists believe there are fewer than 300 of these animals left alive in the entire contiguous U.S., with most of them inhabiting Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington.

The scientific name for wolverine is Gulo gulo, meaning “glutton.” Wolverines are the largest member of the weasel family, and the home range of single wolverine may span several hundred square miles.

credit USFWS

Wolverine populations have declined, primarily due to recreational trapping.  The species now faces another, more ominous threat, however: global climate change. Wolverines require a persistent, deep spring snowpack in order to maintain the dens that offer protection for their kits. Global warming is now beginning to reduce the spring snow levels in the mountainous areas of the U.S., though, and scientists now believe this may impact wolverine behavior. In some cases,  mothers and kits may even be forced to abandon their melting dens before the kits are ready for out-of-den survival.

With Friday’s announcement by the USFWS, there is new hope for wolverines, as the agency must now begin the process of drafting a recovery plan for the species, including steps to protect habitat that is essential for wolverine survival. Of course, protecting places for wolverines will  be only a temporary and partial solution as long we continue to ignore the warming of our planet. Without a concerted effort to reduce emissions of heat-trapping air pollutants, the places that wolverines can survive will continue to shrink.

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