Protect gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act

The petition to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Pres. Joe Biden reads:

"Reverse the Trump wolf delisting and return gray wolves' protections under the Endangered Species Act."

Wolves in the United States were the subject of brutal and reckless attempts to drive them from the landscape in the last century. When they were protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1974, they were gone in all but one state in the continental US. The protections of the Endangered Species Act have allowed gray wolves to recover in some parts of the country.

But the Trump Administration issued a rule in its final days that removed these vital protections from still-recovering gray wolves in the lower 48 states.

Tell Pres. Biden and Interior Secretary Haaland: Protect gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act

Without Endangered Species Act protections, states will have no limits on the management of this iconic and maligned species:

  • In Wisconsin, the state held a hastily-organized hunting and trapping season in February resulting in the slaughter of more than 200 wolves in just three days.

  • In Montana, where wolves lost Endangered Species Act protections in 2011, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a series of bills that allow the killing of as many wolves as possible by gun, snares, and traps. There is even a bill that would create “wolf bounties” to pay trophy hunters and trappers for slaughtering the state’s wolves.

  • In Minnesota, the state senate voted to require a wolf hunt if Endangered Species Act protections are not restored.

  • In Idaho, a bill just passed the legislature that would allow hunters to kill as many as 90 percent of the state’s 1,500 wolves – leaving just 150 alive.

Without the strong and effective protections of the Endangered Species Act, these same stories of killing instead of conservation could play out across the United States where wolves are trying desperately to re-establish their rightful habitats.

That’s why we’re urging the Biden administration to immediately reverse the Trump wolf delisting and return gray wolves' protections under the Endangered Species Act. Can you add your name to the petition now?