The path to delisting the Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf just got steeper with a decision by a Washington D.C. federal judge this week. The delisting of Yellowstone grizzly bears may also be in doubt.

Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Bush administration Monday to take back protection for gray wolves in the Great Lakes area under the Endangered Species Act. His decision, while technical cuts to the heart of managing endangered species, especially large predators that have so many conflicts with people.

Grey wolves were removed from the endangered species list in 2007 in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The population is booming and spreading out across the Midwest into the suburbs, farmland and south as far as Iowa. Wolves are spreading far beyond where all but the most doctrinaire environmentalists want them to be. For Minnesota especially, which had wolves protected since 1975, delisting was a big relief and an opportunity to manage the species easier around farmers and others who suffered from wolf attacks on their pets and animals.

Environmental groups sued but the issue in the Midwest was far greater than the issues argued out here. Judge Friedman said in his opinion that the central issue was whether the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may delist a “distinct population segment” of a species that is thriving even though the broader
species remains endangered elsewhere.

Friedman said:

“the ESA is ambiguous with respect to the precise question at issue: whether the ESA permits FWS to use the Distinct Population Segment tool to remove the protections of the statute from a healthy sub-population of a listed species, even if that subpopulation was neither designated as a DPS nor listed as endangered or threatened beforehand. As the Final Rule is based on FWS’ erroneous conclusion that the ESA is unambiguous on this point, the Court may neither defer to the agency’s construction nor endorse plaintiffs’ construction. Rather, it must remand the Final Rule to FWS to permit the agency to address the ESA’s ambiguity in light of its expertise, experience and insight into the ESA’s objectives.”

In layman terms that means the Fish and Wildlife Service must give he and other judges a better explanation why they think they can delist a species across part of its range even if it wasn’t first listed that way.

That presents a new issue for the Bush Administration if it intends to try to relist Rocky Mountain grey wolves because it essentially would do the same thing. It is even a bigger issue for the delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly bear since it was listed across the lower 48 states and delisted only in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.

Walk across an invisible line in Idaho and grizzly bears are protected as endangered. On the other side of the line they are protected by the state and can be killed with less red tape.

This court decision could open up a new debate about the Endangered Species Act that environmentalists have largely sought to avoid. Why are we putting wolves in the Rocky Mountains and not in the Adirondacks and other places in the East where we know they would thrive?

Must we restore endangered species to their entire remaining habitat nationwide before delisting?

A few years ago Rep. Mike Simpson introduced a bill that would have authorized reintroducing wolves into the Catskills Mountains just outside of New York City. It got a lot of laughs with references to the region old Borscht belt comedians like Henny Youngman (Take our wolves. Please!)

But even Defenders of Wildlife decided for political reasons not to push the issue of restoring wolves in the east. Friedman’s decision is not going to make a lot of friends for the Endangered Species Act in the Midwest.