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Defenders Magazine
Defenders in Action: Wolves Stopped in Their Tracks
Gray wolves may not have a chance to roam the forests of New England again if a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan comes to pass. The plan, announced in July, would remove endangered species protections for wolves in the Midwest and the Northeast (where there are currently no known populations of the animals
Wolves in the Midwest and Northeast are currently lumped together under the same federal protections. The service is citing the recovery of the animals in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan—where they now number more than 3,000—as a justification for its decision. But conservationists charge that the decision fails to provide for the return of wolves to their historic range in some of the New England states.
"While wolf populations in the three Great Lakes states have recovered, these states can hardly be considered a significant portion of the wolf’s historic range in the entire eastern U.S.,” says Barry Braden, the managing director of the Wolf Conservation Center in New York.
Defenders has sued to retain full endangered species protections for gray wolves, and has petitioned the federal government to separate protections for wolves in the Midwest from those in the Northeast.
But the organization’s pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears. “Policy should match biology,” says J. Christopher Haney, conservation scientist for Defenders. “Combining wolf recovery objectives from the Midwest and Northeast not only gives a false impression of range-wide recovery, it contradicts regional management that has been so successful in conserving gray wolves in the northern Rockies and elsewhere.”
