× Expand U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service If the gray wolf is delisted, it would once again be legal to hunt them in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin’s gray wolves had a reprieve in court earlier this month when a federal appeals panel in Washington, D.C. told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service it had not done enough to justify removing the animal from the endangered species list.

However, advocates for the wolf remain worried, especially as Congress considers legislation that would remove the animals from protected status — and prevent courts from intervening.

“The wolves may have won a battle, but they may lose the war,” says Richard Thiel, who has witnessed first hand the return of wolves to Wisconsin and helped manage them for decades with the state Department of Natural Resources.

Adrian Treves, associate professor of environmental studies at UW-Madison and founder of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, agrees that wolves remain in a precarious situation: “This is just round three. It’s not over. There is going to be more action.”

The gray wolves in the Great Lakes region have been subject to a tug-of-war over their protection for years. As detailed in a March Isthmus cover story, the wolves’ recovery has led to calls to delist them. In Wisconsin, that would mean people would be allowed to hunt them.

The animals were first protected in the lower 48 states in the 1970s, four years after the passage of the Endangered Species Act. At the time, only a small, remnant wolf population in the northeastern corner of Minnesota remained.

“Recovery plans were doled out to regions with the greatest potential for wolf repopulation,” explains Thiel, who has written three books about wolves in state.

After the animals recovered in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed them from protection in 2011, returning wolf management to the states.

However, in a case brought by the Humane Society of the United States, a district judge ruled against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2014, and wolves regained their protected status. The Humane Society — not to be confused with the many local, independent animal shelters around the United States — is a national animal protection organization.

The new unanimous decision of the three-judge panel upheld the 2014 ruling. “This has been a long-running saga,” says Ralph Henry, director of the Humane Society’s animal protection litigation. “This was the fourth time that the federal government has tried to reduce or eliminate protection for wolves in the Great Lakes region.”

Henry says the court ruled that the Fish and Wildlife service has to consider what delisting in the Great Lakes will mean to the animal’s survival nationally. “The court [ruled] that because you think a population is doing well in one place, you can’t treat that population separately without explaining what delisting these wolves will do to the bigger region,” Henry explains. “The court didn’t say that they can never remove protections in the Great Lakes. They just said they have to look at the whole picture.”

Some wildlife advocates, Henry notes, believe more wolves in the Great Lakes region could connect with the national population through habitat corridors to the east and west, increasing genetic diversity and helping the species’ long term survival.

But that more stable population might not be possible if Congress approves legislation to remove wolves from protection in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming — and bar a judicial review.

The courts are now making decisions within the framework of the Endangered Species Act, Henry says. “The provisions that provide for judicial review of the Endangered Species Act largely exist within the Act, and Congress created that. What Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away,” he says. “There are some rights that exist for judicial review, but in general the types of lawsuits that have succeeded in wolves’ favor in the last 15 years have been brought under the bylaws of the Environmental Protection Act.”

Over the past 40 years, wolves have begun to prosper in the Great Lakes region, where they now number about 3,800 in the combined area of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Regionally, Thiel says the best wolf habitat is Minnesota, followed by the upper peninsula of Michigan, followed by Wisconsin. “Wisconsin’s population probably exceeds the capacity of the available habitat to support them, so they are spilling out into areas where they cause conflict with humans.”

Thiel believes there is enough public land in the region to sustain a healthy wolf population without conflicting with humans, but the question now becomes, what is the appropriate number of wolves?

The Wisconsin DNR still posts a wolf management plan that was prepared in 1999 when there were only 200 wolves in the state. That plan set a target of 350 wolves. The current wolf population in the state is approaching 900 with minimal friction reported, however the DNR is prepared to reduce the wolf population to 350 through hunting, if the state is given responsibility over the wolf population.

This concerns Thiel. “There is political backlash against wolves, driving multiple efforts in the U.S. Congress to legislatively delist wolves so they will no longer be protected under the the Endangered Species Act. It has been accomplished already in Montana and Idaho, and there is movement afoot to do that here.”

Treves also worries about the political pressure. “The anti-wolf groups hold a lot of fear and resentment about wolf protection, which I feel is unwarranted,” he says. “We know how to protect livestock from wolves. Wolves do not take deer away from hunters. Wolves do not threaten safety more than other wildlife. Wolves have positive benefits for the the economy and the ecosystem.”

Thiel sees less danger in delisting the wolves than in losing the right to relist them. “The big stick has been that if state management allows the population to drop to a certain point, then wolves will have to be put back on the list. But we are moving toward a scenario where wolves cannot be federally protected regardless of what happens after delisting.”