The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been sued for calling red wolves "nonessential"/USFWS fil

While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to resume work to recover the red wolf, its decision to label the species as "nonessential" under the Endangered Species Act has spurred a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity.

An agreement reached in August calls for the Service to publicize for eight years plans to release red wolves into eastern North Carolina.

The red wolf is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, with 13 known wild red wolves surviving in eastern North Carolina, according to the Center. Under the nonessential label, there are certain conditions where the wolves can be moved or even killed.

“It’s absurd for the Fish and Wildlife Service to conclude that the world’s last wild population of red wolves isn’t essential,” said Perrin de Jong, Southeast staff attorney at the Center. “It’s time for the agency to acknowledge that this persecuted population of endangered wolves is an irreplaceable part of Southeastern ecosystems. These severely imperiled animals deserve the highest level of protection.”

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, notes that the Endangered Species Act defines an experimental population as ‘essential’ if the loss of the population would significantly reduce the likelihood of the species’ survival in the wild. Because the red wolf experimental population is the only wild population of the species, its loss would eliminate the species from the wild, the Center said.

The law therefore compels the Service to designate the population as ‘essential’ and provide greater protections to the red wolves, the lawsuit notes.

Red wolves once roamed the American Southeast and beyond, from Texas to Florida and as far north as New York. But people relentlessly killed the predators after the colonization of the Americas until only a handful remained. In the early 1990s, a red wolf recovery program was attempted at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with two pairs of red wolves set loose in the park in January 1991. But seven years later, after nearly 40 wolves had been released there and gave birth to 33 pups, the program was abandoned.

In 1986 the Service established an experimental population of red wolves in North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and designated it as ‘nonessential.’ In 1995 the agency revised the management rule for this population and created allowances for private landowners to kill red wolves.

In 2016 the Center and allies petitioned the Service to reclassify the population as ‘essential’ and eliminate allowances for private landowners to kill non-offending wolves. In January 2023 the Service denied the Center’s petition. The latest lawsuit challenges that decision. It also aims to remove the agency’s rules allowing private landowners to needlessly shoot red wolves.

“The agency must follow the letter and spirit of the Endangered Species Act and start treating red wolves with the utmost level of care,” said de Jong.