A collection of industry groups and nonprofits filed a petition Friday asking the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the gray wolf from the list of threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.
The petition, led by property rights group American Stewards of Liberty, argues that the currently listed wolves living in parts of the contiguous 48 states are merely a tiny portion of a “considerably larger gray wolf population extending through Canada and Alaska and continuing across Asia and Europe.”
These wolves do not qualify as a species, subspecies, or “distinct population segment” under the Act and therefore should be delisted, the petition says.
Currently, gray wolves on the continental U.S. are listed as threatened in Minnesota and endangered in the remaining states, except the Northern Rocky Mountain population. Those wolves were delisted by Congress in 2011, and their populations are now managed by state agencies.
