In April 2011, Congress delisted the Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf in Idaho and Montana. Upon delisting, these states immediately instituted aggressive hunting and trapping seasons on the species, with the intention of reducing its numbers.

Six years later, the Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf was delisted in Wyoming through a court ruling. Wyoming is even more aggressive when it comes to managing the species: a majority of the state constitutes a "predatory zone" where wolves can be shot on sight. Like the other states, it intends to reduce the numbers of this native species.

A year has passed since the Wyoming delisting, and the first annual population report was recently released by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD); here is a link to it: https://wgfd.wyo.gov/WGFD/media/content/PDF/Wildlife/Large%20Carnivore/2017-Wyoming-Wolf-Annual-Report_FINAL_2018-04-10.pdf.

The information is disturbing. The goal over the past year was to decrease the wolf population by 24%. Thankfully that goal was not achieved, but the wolf population outside of Yellowstone National Park dropped by 16%. In addition, 46.9% of wolf mortality in Wyoming was caused by wolf hunting (in both the "trophy game zone" and the "predatory zone" combined), and human-caused factors in general caused most wolf mortality in the state.

If this is how the Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf is going to be managed, then the species should be relisted under the ESA until the states decide to manage it as a native wildlife species that should exist in ecologically healthy numbers, rather than a pest to be managed at minimum numbers that are just high enough to meet the 20-year-old federal recovery and delisting requirements.

This is what happens when a Gray Wolf population is politically delisted and why we should ensure that it never happens again. A scientific delisting would never allow this type of mismanagement to occur.