Endangered Species Act, Gray Wolves Targeted by Congress

House Natural Resources Committee considers bills to eliminate protections for threatened and endangered species and for the gray wolf

For Immediate Release: March 25, 2025
Contacts:
Jewel Tomasula jewel@endangered.org
Susan Holmes sholmes@endangered.org

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries will consider legislation to amend the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and a separate bill to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list today.

Introduced by Representative Westerman (R-AR), the ESA Amendments Act of 2025 (H.R. 1897) would gut core protections for our most endangered wildlife. The bill would bring back regulations put in place by the Trump administration in 2019, which the Biden administration subsequently revised. It would slow the species listing process, speed up delisting, undermine the work of experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and gut the consultation process that ensures federal agencies do not take actions that could drive a species extinct.

“The Endangered Species Act is one of America’s most respected and successful conservation laws. Ninety-nine percent of the species listed are with us today because of the ESA. Unfortunately, Representative Westerman’s ESA amendments are crafted for greedy billionaires clinging to a 19th-century vision of plundering the planet,” said Endangered Species Coalition National Policy Director Jewel Tomasula. “This bill would devastate the sea turtles people love to see at the beach, the bumblebees that pollinate our food crops, and the spotted owls that indicate healthy forests. This bill would destroy wildlife and wild places, not protect them.”

The hearing will also consider H.R. 845, sponsored by Representative Boebert (CO-04), which seeks to remove gray wolves from the list of endangered and threatened species and prohibit any challenges to the law in court. Specifically, the bill would reinstate a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) delisting decision issued in November 2020, the end of the first Trump administration, which was overturned in court because FWS did not use the best available science, among other serious errors.

“The return of the gray wolf to the lower-48 states is one of America’s greatest conservation success stories,” said Susan Holmes, Executive Director, Endangered Species Coalition.  “Removing protection for wolves would reverse the recovery of one of our most beloved species and take us back to a time when wolves were shot, trapped, and poisoned until they disappeared from the landscape.  Endangered Species Act protections remain key to ensuring gray wolves return to the American landscape where they belong,” said Holmes.    

“Both these bills are completely out of step with the public and their love of wildlife, “ continued Holmes. “The Endangered Species Act has overwhelming bipartisan support. Eighty-nine percent of democrats and eighty percent of republicans support the ESA,”  said Holmes. According to a recent poll by the National Parks Conservation Association, 84 percent of Americans support returning wolves to suitable national park landscapes in the Lower 48.

Background on the Endangered Species Act

The ESA provides practical solutions to recover plant and animal species threatened with extinction. As of 2023, 99% of all species listed as “endangered” or “threatened” under the ESA have been saved from extinction. Hundreds of species are on the path to recovery, thanks to actions facilitated and enforced under the ESA, which include partnerships with dedicated researchers, field workers, citizen scientists, and volunteers working to save species throughout the country.

Background on gray wolves

Approximately two million gray wolves roamed North America in the early 1800s, but both legal and illegal efforts eradicated them from the continental United States. Today, gray wolf numbers are fewer than 7,000, and they occupy only about 10 percent of their historic range in the Lower 48 States. A successful U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-led restoration effort in the mid-1990s, in partnership with Nez Perce Tribe, brought wolves back throughout the Northern Rockies region, and a voter-initiated effort to restore the species to Colorado began in 2024. Other areas of suitable habitat in the U.S. do not yet have an established population of gray wolves.