(WWJ) – Federal protections under the Endangered Species Act for gray wolves have been restored across much of the U.S., including Michigan, meaning any ideas of a wolf hunt in the state have been put on hold.
In a ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to show wolf populations could sustain themselves without protections.
Protections had been removed in 2020, near the end of the Trump administration, opening the door for the return of wolf hunts in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Some Michigan House Republicans this winter had been pushing for the Natural Resource Commission to allow wolf hunts, to be organized by the Department of Natural Resources.
DNR officials had said they wanted to wait until the legal status of hunting wolves was more settled, according to a report from WZZM in Grand Rapids earlier this month.
Now any plans of a potential hunt in Michigan will be put on hold after Thursday’s ruling.
Advocates for wildlife sued the Fish and Wildlife Agency in 2021, claiming any state-sponsored hunting would be harmful to the gray wolf’s recovery, according to the Associated Press.
While the latest ruling won’t impact some states in the northern Rocky Mountains, there will be a halt in the Great Lakes region. Wisconsin state officials had come under fire for allowing a hunt that saw quotas far surpassed, with more than 200 wolves harvested in just four days.
The gray wolf once inhabited most parts of the U.S., according to the DNR, including all 83 of Michigan’s counties at one point in time. But overhunting led to a dwindling population by the 1960s.
There were only an estimated 20 wolves in Michigan in 1992, but that number has since grown back to more than 600 recently, the DNR says, thanks to protections and recovery efforts.
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