The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a notice of its intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for refusing to develop a national gray wolf recovery plan under the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act requires that parties submit a 60-day notice of intent to sue before a lawsuit can be filed, and the Center intends to file its formal lawsuit in early February.

In early November, the Trump administration reversed course when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would not issue a nationwide recovery plan for gray wolves slated to be launched this month. In the announcement, the Service stated that “[b]oth listed gray wolf entities are no longer in need of conservation under the Act due to recovery. We therefore conclude that recovery plans for these two entities would not promote their conservation.”

“We’re challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful decision to once again abandon wolf recovery, and we’ll win,” said Collette Adkins, a senior attorney and the carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Fish and Wildlife Service must live up to the reality of what science and the law demand. That means a comprehensive plan that addresses gray wolf recovery across the country.”

According to the Center, recovery plans should describe actions needed to achieve the full recovery of animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act. The gray wolf’s outdated recovery plan was developed in 1992 and mostly focuses on Minnesota. It neglects other places where wolves live and could recover, like the West Coast, southern Rocky Mountains and northeastern United States.

After protecting gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf-recovery planning focused on wolf populations in three separate geographic areas, but there’s still no comprehensive plan that addresses gray wolf recovery across the country decades after the ESA listing. Many areas where wolves live and breed have no federal plan to guide their recovery.

The Center notes that federal protections have allowed the nation’s wolf population to increase slowly, but only to about 1% of their historical numbers and occupying only about 15% of their historical range. Despite this the Service has routinely attempted to remove protection from wolves.

In November 2020, the first Trump administration stripped gray wolves of their federal protections. A federal court restored them, but not before hundreds of wolves were hunted and trapped under state management.

“We know that Trump’s plan to strip gray wolves of lifesaving protections will be a disaster because we’ve seen it before,” said Adkins. “This cycle of on-and-off again protections must end. Wolves deserve to be safe and that’s why we keep fighting for them.”