WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit today challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s refusal to develop a national gray wolf recovery plan under the Endangered Species Act.
The Service in late 2025 published a finding that listing the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act is “no longer appropriate” and that the agency would not be preparing an updated recovery plan.
“Instead of trying to illegally strip wolves of protections once again, the Fish and Wildlife Service must finally follow the law and develop a plan to achieve nationwide wolf recovery,” said Collette Adkins, a senior attorney and director of the Center’s Carnivore Conservation program. “Wolves are so important to America’s biodiversity and they deserve a plan that guides conservation in places where they’re struggling like the West Coast and southern Rocky Mountains.”
The agency’s recent finding reflects a policy reversal by the Trump administration. In 2024 the Service under the Biden administration announced that a national recovery plan for gray wolves would be a central feature of its approach to conserving gray wolves.
That announcement stemmed from the settlement of a previous Center lawsuit seeking a national wolf recovery plan. In that case the federal court ruled that the gray wolf’s piecemeal recovery plans didn’t satisfy the Endangered Species Act.
Recovery plans should describe actions needed to achieve full recovery of protected species, but the gray wolf’s outdated recovery plan from 1992 focuses on Minnesota. It fails to address other places where the wolf occurs and could recover, like the West Coast and Southern Rocky Mountains.
“I’m frustrated we have to go to court yet again to force the Trump administration to do its job and comply with the Endangered Species Act,” said Adkins. “If federal officials would let this landmark law truly work for wolves, we could see these amazing animals start to recover in places they once thrived like the northeastern United States.”
Under the first Trump administration, the Service stripped gray wolves of their federal safeguards. Before a federal court in 2022 restored wolves’ Endangered Species Act protections, hundreds of wolves were hunted and trapped while under state management.
Background
Upon listing gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act, the agency focused its wolf-recovery planning on wolf populations in three separate geographic areas: the “eastern timber wolf” in Minnesota, the now-delisted gray wolf population in the northern Rocky Mountains and the now separately listed Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest.
Decades later there is still no plan that comprehensively addresses gray wolf recovery across the country. Many areas where wolves currently live and breed — and where their reestablishment is in its infancy like California and Colorado — have no federal plan to guide their recovery.
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 the species.
In November 2020 the agency finalized a rule that removed all Endangered Species Act protections from most gray wolves nationwide. A federal court vacated that rule in February 2022 and restored the wolf’s federal protection. The Service’s appeal of that ruling remains pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Although the gray wolf’s current Endangered Species Act protections do not extend to wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, the Center and its allies recently won a lawsuit aimed at restoring federal protections to wolves in that region. The Service has also appealed that ruling, and its opening brief is due this month.
