A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it came to helping red wolves/USFWS

A federal judge has ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by rolling back protections for the only wild population of red wolves in North Carolina.

While the red wolf recovery program had been viewed as a success in 2007, the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2014 essentially reversed direction and, "without consultation or formal review, determined to disregard management guidelines which had been in place since 1999," noted U.S. Chief District Judge Terrence W. Boyle in his 19-page ruling (attached below) handed down Monday. Not only did the agency err in allowing landowners to kill the predators, but it also ceased wolf releases into the wild, he added.

"(t)here is no doubt that defendants' decisions to cease wolf introductions while simultaneously increasing the likelihood of authorized lethal takes by landowners 'may adversely affect an endangered or threatened species,'" wrote the judge.

Pointing to a drastic decline in the red wolf population, from more than 100 in 2012-13 to only about two dozen today, Judge Boyle wrote that "(T)he population decrease coincides with defendants' making internal revisions to its guidelines and management policies, in response at least in part to mounting public pressure against red wolf recovery efforts, and defendants have failed to proffer any other evidence which could be deemed responsible for such change."

With that ruling the judge made permanent his September 29, 2016, order stopping the Fish and Wildlife Service from capturing and killing, and authorizing private landowners to capture and kill wild red wolves. 

“For four years now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been dismantling one of the most successful predator reintroductions in U.S. history,” said Sierra Weaver, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The service knows how to protect and recover the red wolf in the wild, but it stopped listening to its scientists and started listening to bureaucrats instead.  The law doesn’t allow the agency to just walk away from species conservation, like it did here.”

The lawsuit was brought by the Southern Environmental Legal Center on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, the Animal Welfare Institute, and the Red Wolf Coalition. The groups brought the federal court action over the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to allow red wolves that were not causing any problems to be shot and killed by private landowners, at the same time as it rolled back conservation measures that had helped red wolves grow from four pairs released in 1987, to more than 100 animals in eastern North Carolina from 2002-2014.  

“Support for red wolf protection has been overwhelming,” said Jason Rylander, senior staff attorney for Defenders of Wildlife. “But, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has ignored public support and moved forward with a proposal that will doom the species to extinction. Today’s decision by the court to protect red wolves from being shot and killed offers a glimmer of hope for species recovery and new energy to make this program successful once again.” 

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, had written Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in June to ask if he planned to give up on efforts to recover red wolf populations in North Carolina, where a pilot program to return the endangered predators to Great Smoky Mountains National Park failed in the 1990s.

"Instead of giving up on the recovery of red wolves, the FWS should take proactive measures to prevent permanent extinction of the species, fully implement the Red Wolf Adaptive Management plan, reintroduce captive wolves into the wild, and reinstate an effective landowner outreach program," the Democrat wrote.

Two pairs of red wolves were set loose in Great Smoky in January 1991, but seven years later, after nearly 40 wolves had been released there and gave birth to 33 pups, the program in the park was abandoned.

“The District Court’s ruling today makes it clear that USFWS’s recent management decisions have failed to protect the red wolf population,” said Johanna Hamburger, wildlife attorney for the Animal Welfare Institute.  “Scientists have warned that if USFWS continues to ignore the recovery needs of the red wolf, these animals may once again be extinct in the wild by 2024. The court has ruled that this is unacceptable and that USFWS has a duty under the ESA to implement proactive conservation measures to achieve species recovery.”

According to the conservation groups, 99.9 percent of the 108,124 comments that the agency received on its proposed rule supported red wolf recovery in the wild. Only 19 comments—with 13 of these coming from a single real estate developer—supported the Fish and Wildlife Service's proposal to restrict red wolves to only federal lands in Dare County. 

Once common throughout the Southeast, intensive predator control programs and loss of habitat drove the red wolf to extinction in the wild in the late 1970s. Later, red wolves bred in captivity were reintroduced on a North Carolina peninsula within their native range in the late 1980s.