Success!
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted July 19 by a margin of 5 to 4 to reject the proposal to prematurely downlist wolves, choosing to maintain Washington’s current levels of protection. Please take a moment to email commission@dfw.wa.gov to thank the commissioners who stood up for the state’s cougars and wolves!
In July, the state Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider a proposal by Department management to downlist wolves from “endangered” to “sensitive” on the state endangered species list—even though they have not met the requirements for downlisting in the state’s wolf recovery plan. This is the latest effort by management to weaken protections for wolves in response to demands from special interests such as predator hunters and the livestock industry. The Department has made no secret that its end goal is a wolf hunting season.
The truth is that Washington’s wolves need more protections, not fewer. Washington’s wolves are under increasing threat from poaching and legal tribal hunting, which have caused human-caused mortality to more than double in the last three years. A vote to weaken protections now would be reckless and irresponsible—and could threaten the future of wolves in the Washington.
Please act now to ask the state Fish and Wildlife Commission to reject this proposal and maintain full protections for Washington’s wolves!
Scroll to the bottom of the page to learn more!
Learn more:
- Talking points opposing the wolf downlisting proposal
- Department’s 2024 Wolf Periodic Status Review, recommending downlisting
- Washington’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan
- Unpublished 2023 wolf population study by Petracca, et al.
- Published 2024 study by Petracca et. al (removing much of the 2023 content)
A couple of minutes is all it takes to use our form to submit comments opposing the wolf downlisting proposal. Please try to have all comments in no later than July 10, so there is time to review them before the July 19 vote. We provide sample language to get you started, but it is very important to personalize your comment.
You can also draw on our talking points and email your comments directly to commission@dfw.wa.gov. Just a couple of sentences will do, but remember to (1) tell Commissioners where you are from, and (2) be polite and respectful.
Write a comment now
We know Washingtonians care about our wildlife, but few of them are aware of the urgent issues that need their attention—such as the threat to our state wolf population. We need more people to raise their voices with the Commission. Please help spread the word by sharing this page with family, friends, and connections who care about wildlife.
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We are a tiny state-based grassroots organization, attempting to stand up for wolves, cougars, bears, marine mammals, and other carnivores against well-funded national machines like the National Rifle Association and the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance. Please donate today to help us pursue protections for Washington’s wildlife.
DONATE NOWOppose WDFW’s Proposal to Decrease Protections for Washington’s Wolves!
Wolf populations are under attack all around us. Idaho has hired helicopter sharpshooters to help kill 60% of its wolf population, and over the past two years hunters have killed 560 wolves. British Columbia has spent more than $10 million to kill nearly 2,000 wolves since 2015 with helicopter sharpshooters, while hunters kill about 1,200 more every year. And after Oregon prematurely stripped its wolves of state endangered species status, it has seen the growth of its small wolf population flatten.
Now, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is pushing to prematurely lift protections for wolves under the state endangered species list in violation of its own Wolf Conservation and Management Plan. The Department’s proposal would downlist wolves from “endangered” to “sensitive,” completely bypassing the “threatened” designation.
Wolves in Washington have not recovered. Prior to lifting the “endangered” designation, the state recovery plan requires established breeding pairs of wolves in all three state recovery zones. However, the Department has confirmed that there are still no breeding pairs in the South Cascades and Northwest Coast recovery zone—the largest recovery zone containing the best wolf habitat in the state. Since wolves are still functionally extinct in the largest recovery zone, it is ludicrous for the Department to claim they are no longer endangered, which under state law means a species is “seriously threatened with extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range within the state.”
However, the Department’s proposal ignores its own recovery plan in order to placate the special interests that have pressured other states to decimate their wolf populations. The Department ignores the fact that wolf mortality has been skyrocketing. Over the past three years, humans have killed 93 wolves in Washington, including 55 wolves killed in tribal hunts, 15 by poachers, 10 in lethal control actions by the Department, and 4 in purported “caught in the act” incidents. This equates to an average of 31 wolves killed each year since 2021, more than double the 12 wolves a year killed during the prior 9 years.
The Department bases its downlisting recommendation on a single, flawed population study that purports to evaluate the likelihood that wolves will reach recovery objectives over the next 50 years under different scenarios. This study fails to account for wolf poaching or look at what will happen to the population if there is more than one pressure at once. But even if taken at face value, the study paints a grim picture. Even without accounting for any other pressures, the study shows that at the current level of tribal hunting there is only a 12% likelihood that wolves will recover over the next 50 years.
Downlisting now may doom the chances of recovery. This move would also have several immediate impacts, including:
- lowering the already lax penalties for wolf poaching, at the same time that wolf poaching is on the rise;
- allowing WDFW to issue permits to livestock owners to shoot wolves on public lands;
- removing protections that require logging operations to observe a buffer around wolf dens; and
- lifting the requirement that the impacts to wolves be considered by private, local, or state entities that are evaluating potential actions under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA)
Perhaps most importantly, this change would have a significant symbolic and psychological impact. It would be the first step toward removing all protections from the state’s wolves and following in Idaho’s footsteps to institute a hunting season. And studies have shown that when the state decreases wolf protections, it devalues wolves, and both reported and non-reported poaching incidents increase.