Feds deny endangered species designation
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced last week that it will deny protections for the rare and elusive wolverine under the Endangered Species Act, prompting a coalition of conservation groups to announce they intend to sue.
“Recent scientific information makes clear that wolverines face threats from the destruction of their snowy habitat due to climate change,” said Earthjustice attorney Timothy Preso. “We intend to take action to make sure that the Trump administration’s disregard of the real impacts of climate change does not doom the wolverine to extinction in the lower-48 states.”
With fewer than 300 wolverines left in the contiguous United States, conservation advocates say there is no justification for the FWS decision to deny protection. Listing wolverines as threatened or endangered would trigger new, badly needed conservation efforts, according to a statement issued by Conservation Northwest, based in Bellingham.
The mountains of the North Cascades surrounding the Methow Valley are one of the few areas in the United States where wolverines are found. Wolverines have been studied extensively in this area during a multi-year research project that placed radio collars on wolverines to learn about behavior and habitat.
In its announcement on Oct. 8, FWS said: “New research and analysis show that wolverine populations in the American Northwest remain stable, and individuals are moving across the Canadian border in both directions and returning to former territories. The species, therefore, does not meet the definition of threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).”
As a result of the agency’s decision, wolverines “ will continue to be managed by state wildlife agencies and tribes with assistance from other land management and conservation partners,” FWS said.
Coalition formed
Earthjustice will represent a coalition of conservation groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Northwest, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Clearwater, Idaho Conservation League, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Rocky Mountain Wild.
“Wolverines are rare, wide-ranging carnivores of the high wild country facing growing threats from climate change and winter recreation,” said Dave Werntz, Science and Conservation Director at Conservation Northwest. “Wolverines deserve federal protection and the associated resources and recovery actions to ensure a future for wolverine in the Pacific Northwest.”
“The wolverines in the Clearwater Basin are in particular trouble, in part, because the Forest Service allows snowmobile use in prime wolverine habitat,” said Gary Macfarlane, with Friends of the Clearwater. “With climate change and preliminary indications that the Forest Service could open up even more wolverine habitat to winter motorized use could spell doom for wolverines in north-central Idaho.”
“It’s outrageous that the Fish and Wildlife Service has again shrugged off the science showing that wolverines are in trouble and desperately need federal protection,” said Andrea Zaccardi, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s sad that after years of inaction, we need to go to court again to ensure wolverines get the protections they need before it’s too late.”
“Once again, the federal government has failed the wolverine,” said Brad Smith, North Idaho Director, Idaho Conservation League. Without critically needed conservation efforts that a threatened or endangered listing would trigger, we fear that future generations of Idahoans will never be lucky enough to see the rare and sensitive wolverine.”
Once widespread
Wolverines, the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family, once roamed across the northern tier of the United States and as far south as New Mexico in the Rockies and Southern California in the Sierra Nevada range. After more than a century of trapping and habitat loss, wolverines in the Lower 48 today exist only as small, fragmented populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming and northeast Oregon.
In the wolverine’s last strongholds, the species is at direct risk from climate change. Wolverines depend on areas with deep snow through late spring. Pregnant females dig their dens into this snowpack to birth and raise their young. Snowpack is already in decline in the western mountains, a trend that is predicted to worsen with a warming climate.
Wolverine populations are also at risk from traps, human disturbance, habitat fragmentation and extremely low population numbers resulting in low genetic diversity. Without new conservation efforts, the dangers faced by wolverines threaten remaining populations with localized extinctions and inbreeding.
Recognizing these threats and the need for new protection measures, conservation groups petitioned to list the wolverine as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 2000. “For two decades, the Fish and Wildlife Service has delayed and obstructed the proposed wolverine listing,” according to Conservation Northwest.
Advocates for protecting wolverines have repeatedly turned to the courts for enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. Earthjustice and the groups it represents have won every case they have filed on behalf of the wolverine, either through judicial rulings in their favor or through favorable settlement agreements, Conservation Northwest said.
