On May 18, 2023, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) issued its draft Periodic Status Review for the Gray Wolf (PSR), which recommends downlisting gray wolves from a state endangered species to a state sensitive species, bypassing the threatened category. WDFW is making this recommendation to satisfy special interests, not because wolves in Washington have recovered. But Washington’s wolves have not recovered. Prematurely downlisting wolves will jeopardize wolf recovery and decrease the likelihood that the state will ever have a robust, healthy wolf population.

Although we will be later submitting our objections to the Department in letter form, Washington Wildlife First has compiled the following outline of objections to the draft periodic status review for reference by organizations and individual advocates seeking to draft their own comments, letters, talking points, testimony, and information for member action alerts. The deadline for submitting comments is midnight on August 16, 2023.

I. Washington’s wolves have not recovered.

A.  The Washington wolf population does not meet the minimal objectives set in the 2011 Wolf Recovery Plan for downlisting to threatened or sensitive.

1. 1. The Plan establishes three recovery zones: Eastern Washington, Northern Cascades, and the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast. Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, WDFW, December 2011 (Plan), at 23.
   2. To downlist to threatened, the Plan requires 6 successful breeding pairs statewide for 3 consecutive years, with at least 2 successful breeding pairs in each of the 3 recovery regions. Plan at 9, 64. To downlist to sensitive, the Plan requires 12 successful breeding pairs for 3 consecutive years, with at least 4 successful breeding pairs in each of the 3 recovery regions. Plan at 9, 64.
   3. But there are no successful breeding pairs in the South Cascades and Northwest Coast recovery zone. The PSR concedes wolves have only have a “novel presence in the South Cascades.” PSR at 28.
   4. The Plan made clear that these recovery standards were minimal and the result of compromise, with 2 of 3 blind reviewers finding them inadequate.

B.  The Washington wolf population does not meet the standards for downlisting to threatened or sensitive set by WAC 220-610-110.

1. 1. Under WAC 220-610-110, “endangered” wildlife is any wildlife species native to Washington that is “seriously threatened with extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range within the state.” “Threatened” means a native species “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout a significant portion of its range within the state without cooperative management or removal of threats.”
   2. Washington’s wolves are not only “likely” to become endangered in a “significant portion” of their range: they are still extinct or near extinct in a substantial portion of their range.
   3. There are no breeding pairs in the Southern Cascades and Northwest Recovery zone. This zone is more than 1/3 of the state and contains a substantial portion of the best wolf habitat in the state. Gray Wolf Habitat Suitability Analysis for Washington State, Tufts University, December 2013.

C.  WDFW claims that a population of only 216 wolves concentrated in just a couple of locations in the state is “robust.”

D. WDFW misleadingly asserts that the wolf population is growing at rate of 23% a year. This deceptive statistic includes years when wolf population grew from 19 to 35 (a high percentage given low population, but low numbers).

E.  According to the 2022 Annual Wolf Report, last year, Washington’s tiny population of wolves only grew by 10 wolves to a population of 216.

F.  Growth in the last five years has averaged 12.4%, with only 5% growth last year.

II. WDFW’s recommendation disregards the 2011 Wolf Conservation and Management Plan.

A.  The plan was a multi-year effort that included significant scientific review, broad stakeholder involvement, and peer review.

B.  WDFW’s disregard of the 2011 Plan undermines the planning process and public trust. Once again, the agency has made clear that it will not follow any of its internal policies or plans—saying it will “consider” that guidance but is only obligated to follow binding rules.

C.  This downlisting calls into question the value of any planning or work on policies, including the new draft Conservation Policy under consideration.

D.  WDFW is picking and choosing which parts of the Plan it will follow, disregarding those aspects—such as the guidelines for downlisting—that it finds inconvenient. This deprives their process of any credibility.

E.  If WDFW wants to reexamine the plan, it should do so by conducting a thorough update to the plan that incorporates new science and involves peer review.

III. WDFW’s recommendation is based on a flawed, incomplete, and already outdated population study whose conclusions do not justify this change.

A.  It seeks to overturn the careful work done by the 2011 Plan by relying on a population study done in 2020 that predicts the trajectory of the wolf population for the next 50 years under different scenarios.

B.  This study has not yet gone through the independent peer review process that is crucial to scientific integrity.

C.  The study acknowledges that its results are subject to enormous uncertainty. For example, under the “baseline” scenario, the study indicates a 95% confidence interval that there is between a 2% and 89% chance that wolves will reach recovery goals by 2070. Under the baseline, half of the model’s outcomes indicate there is more than a 60% chance wolves will reach recovery objectives, with the other half of the outcomes falling below 60% confidence.

D.  Even with this great uncertainty, the prospects are somewhat grim.

1. 1. We would expect that recovery within 50 years should be a near certainty, and the 2011 Plan makes clear that its minimal recovery objectives fall far short of a healthy wolf population that is sufficient to restore ecosystem balance.
   2. Yet the study shows a median likelihood of recovery of over 50% for only three of the scenarios that it analyzed, and below 50% for five other scenarios.
   3. WDFW emphasizes that the study shows the population is unlikely to decline or reach near extinction, which should not be among the outcomes on the table at this point. It seems to have given up on wolf recovery, much less restoring a healthy wolf population to the state.

E.  In the past two years, the baseline used for the study is already outdated, showing the risks of trying to predict what will happen to wolves over a 50-year-span.

1. 1.  The study assumes that tribal hunting will kill an average of 4.83 wolves per year. But tribal hunting has skyrocketed in the last two years as the seasons have expanded and the restrictions have lifted, to an average of 16.5 a year.
   2. This means the “harvest” rate has already exceeded the rate of 2.5% of wolves being killed every six months and is creeping toward the 5% level. At that level of hunting, the median results show there is only about a 11% likelihood of wolves hitting recovery objectives within 50 years.
   3. The study also does not account for the impact of wolf poaching, even though there has been a dramatic increase in reported poaching incidents, with 9 wolves being illegally killed in 2022. WDFW admits that poaching is more extensive than shown by these reported numbers.

F. The study only analyzes scenarios requested by WDFW.

1. 1. Although it examines the impact of disease, reduced immigration, hunting, and increased agency lethal removal, it fails to examine any of these factors working together. It is very unlikely that just one of these factors will work in isolation.
   2. It excludes any examination of poaching or the additive killing of wolves that is likely as protections ease and the public is allowed to kill wolves.
   3. It fails to examine the impact of climate change.

IV. Downlisting wolves to sensitive is an important step toward removing all protections and will place wolves at greater risk.

A.  WDFW wants to pretend that the decision to downlist doesn’t mean anything. If that is true, why is it pushing this recommendation forward when wolves have not met recovery objectives?

B. The truth is that downlisting wolves would have important consequences.

1. 1. It would allow WDFW to issue permits to livestock producers to kill wolves on public land grazing allotments, whereas the Department has previously only issued such permits for private land.
   2. It would decrease the penalties for poaching wolves from $5,000 and/or up to a year in jail to $1,000 and/or up to 90 days in jail—at the same time that wolf poaching incidents are on the rise.
   3. It could change how they are treated by local governments under the Growth Management Act, Shoreline Management Act, and Forest Practices Act.
   4. It could eliminate WAC 222-16-080’s requirement that foresters avoid tree harvesting and road construction within 1 mile of known wolf den sites, a rule that will become more and more important as the wolf population moves west. WDFW’s recommendation is about politics, not conservation, and is a betrayal of the public trust.

C.  Most importantly, prematurely downlisting wolves is a step toward prematurely removing all protections.

1. 1. If wolves are only “sensitive” and not “endangered,” WDFW will undoubtedly contend that it should have fewer restrictions in killing wolves on behalf of livestock owners, and that it should spend less money and effort on implementing non-lethal deterrents to avoid wolf-livestock conflict.
   2. It will become easier for legislators to argue that all protections should be removed in the northeastern part of the state where most wolves live, as they attempted to do in a failed bill during the 2022-2023 legislative session.
   3. It will move Washington one step closer to opening a wolf hunting season, as it has been contemplating for years as part of its “post recovery plan.”

V. The Department is insisting on downlisting wolves to fulfill a promise made to special interests, without regard for its prior promises or the interests of wolf recovery.

A.  Director Kelly Susewind has been promising special interests such as the livestock industry for years that he would work toward removing wolves from both the federal and state endangered species list.

B.  This recommendation is not based on science, which shows that wolves have not met the standard for downlisting—either under the 2011 Plan or the applicable regulations.

C.  What we are seeing is the delivery of a promise to special interests, which disregards the best interests of the state’s wolf population and the opinions and values of the vast majority of the Washington population.