Federal district Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, Montana, issued a 105-page opinion Tuesday mandating that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service revisit its decision not to relist the gray wolf for protections under the Environmental Species Act. While environmental advocates cheered, this decision seems unlikely to end the battles that have been going on for decades, as the service is likely to appeal the ruling.
By the end of the 1930s, the gray wolf had been wiped out in nearly all the Lower 48 states except for small populations in the remote northern reaches of Minnesota. Wolves had been long before then extirpated in most states. But the wholesale slaughter of wolves in the Western states didn’t get really rolling until the massive slaughter of the bison began in the 1860s, a killing spree that was soon measured in mountains of bone, with just 300 of what had been tens of millions of the animals remaining by 1884.
The bison extermination was a project pushed hard by two Civil War generals, Philip Sheridan and William T. Sherman, who saw it as key to defeating the Indigenous tribes of the Plains by eliminating their sustenance. Eradicating these animals greatly altered both ecosystems and social systems. Killing off wolves was just one more part of the so-called “opening” of the West, and although it wasn’t done specifically to destroy the tribes, this too changed ecosystems and social systems.
By the 1960s, environmental advocates sought to protect the gray wolf. This was first done in 1967 under the Endangered Species Preservation Act, a precursor to the Endangered Species Act. In 1974, the gray wolf was officially listed as endangered under the ESA passed by Congress the previous year. In 1978, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified the wolf as endangered throughout the contiguous U.S., except for the Minnesota population, which was listed as threatened.
But in 2011, while gray wolves continued to be listed as endangered in 44 states and threatened in Minnesota, they were delisted in the Northern Rockies DPS (the Distinct Population Segment that encompasses Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, parts of eastern Oregon and Washington, and north-central Utah). Since then, the matter has been in and out of the courts. Judge Molloy’s decision affects only the DPS since the wolve elsewhere are already protected. There are said to be 1,774 wolves with 109 breeding pairs in the region. Thirty years ago, there were none.
A number of states put a bounty on wolves, a factor that led to the animals being extirpated in all but two states nearly a century ago.
That was when 20 gray wolves from Canada were introduced into Idaho with the idea of restoring the animal to as much of its historic range as possible. The howls heard at the time and ever since didn’t come from the wolves but rather the people who hate them, particularly ranchers unhappy that these predators would target cattle and sheep. Consequently, politicians in those three very rural states have worked hard to sabotage the reintroduction effort, which spread to other states. Thanks to the DPS delisting, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming have been especially aggressive in passing wolf hunting laws. In Wyoming, outside of a small trophy-hunting area in the northwest part of the state around Yellowstone National Park — that is, in 85% of the state — you can shoot a wolf from your car. In fact, you can shoot as many as you want since there’s no limit and no license is required. In Montana and Idaho, wolves by the hundreds are being killed every hunting season, but unlike the Cowboy State, it’s not quite a free-for-all.
Crossposted from The Journal of Uncharted Blue Places.
You can also catch me @meteorblades.bsky.social
Since the Northwest DPS excluded the gray wolf was from ESA listing, there’s been a flurry of attempts at relisting, in 2020, the FWS issued what was meant to be a final rule removing all gray wolves (except the Mexican red wolf subspecies) from protections in the lower 48 states and Mexico. Petitioners sued. Two years later, a federal district judge said the FWS had not applied the proper ESA criteria to make its decision. This restored endangered status in the Lower 48 except for the Northern Rockies DPS, which remained delisted, and in Minnesota, where the wolf was listed as threatened.
Then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland wrote in an op-ed in 2022:
For centuries, wolves have been exploited for their furs, killed in the name of protecting people, livestock and game species and nearly eliminated through government-sponsored actions. Decades of hard work by states, tribes and stakeholders on the ground, along with federal protections, successfully recovered gray wolves after two centuries of decline to the brink of extinction.
As secretary of the Interior, I am committed to ensuring that wolves have the conservation they need to survive and thrive in the wild based on science and law. I am also committed to keeping communities safe and reducing wolf conflicts with ranchers. It is critical that we all recognize that our nation’s wolf populations are integral to the health of fragile ecosystems and hold significant cultural importance in our shared heritage.
In 2023, the FWS issued another final rule, with ESA protections — endangered or threatened — for 45 states and Mexico. But it continued the delisting of wolves in the DPS, a decision it reiterated in 2024. This was so even though the FWS acknowledged that high kill rates in Idaho and Montana could reduce state populations by 80% to 90%, resulting in “fewer than 100 wolves in each state.”
Of the FWS decision, Judge Molloy said, “The service made numerous important assumptions regarding the future condition of the gray wolf without considering what would happen to the species if these conditions, either cumulatively or in isolation, were to change. That decision was arbitrary and capricious given the outsized reliance on these assumptions to offset reduced wolf abundance in the future, which is a certainty.”
FWS also made “numerous unfounded assumptions regarding the future condition of the gray wolf despite recognizing either limitations on those conditions or bias in the population estimates utilized,” Molloy wrote. “Wildlife management agencies are likely to find themselves in a Catch-22 as they cannot escape from mutually conflicting dependent conditions: If the federal agency succeeds in restoring the gray wolf, leading to delisting, then the state agencies will depredate the wolf, leading to relisting, engendering a fruitless cycle of delisting and relisting.”
Wildlife activists cheer ruling
Matthew Bishop, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, which represented one of the two coalitions fighting the delisting in the DPS, said in a statement that “the Endangered Species Act requires the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to consider the best available science, and that requirement is what won the day for wolves in this case. Wolves have yet to recover across the West, and allowing a few states to undertake aggressive wolf-killing regimes is inconsistent with the law. We hope this decision will encourage the service to undertake a holistic approach to wolf recovery in the West.”
Lizzy Pennock, who has the best-job title ever as “carnivore coexistence attorney” at WildEarth Guardians, said: “We feel vindicated by today’s ruling. Anti-wildlife politicians in the Northern Rockies are managing wolves back to the brink of extinction, and it has to stop. Today’s ruling is a huge step in the right direction, finally putting us back on the path to protecting this imperiled and iconic native species.”
Said Patrick Kelly, Montana director for the Western Watersheds Project: “These native carnivores have been subject to years of brutal, unscientific, anti-wolf hysteria that has swept legislatures and wildlife agencies in states like Montana and Idaho. With Montana set to approve a 500 wolf-kill quota at the end of August, this decision could not have come at a better time. Wolves may now have a real shot at meaningful recovery.”
In a written statement, Kate Schultz, senior attorney for the Center for a Humane Economy and a lead counsel in the case, said, “Judge Molloy wholly rejected nearly every argument put forth by the Fish and Wildlife Service in their briefs and oral arguments. This decision was a thorough repudiation of the agency’s handling of wolves, and it is a continuation of a long pattern of cases in which courts have found that the federal government has violated federal law and failed to properly protect wolves in the United States.”
She added, “We urge the Trump Administration to avoid the further waste of federal resources and taxpayer dollars by standing down on any appeal. Instead of defending a finding so infected with error, the Fish and Wildlife Service should conduct an honest assessment of its obligations under the Endangered Species Act — a law that was passed in 1973 under former President Richard Nixon’s Republican Administration and with overwhelming bipartisan support.”
Clark Corbin reports at the Idaho Capital Sun:
Although the ruling itself does not change the status or protections of wolves in Idaho, one of the lead attorneys on the case said the ruling is a clear victory for wolves and conservationists. […]
Idaho Department of Fish and Game Director Jim Fredericks and Gov. Little’s spokeswoman disagreed with the ruling and said the courts should stay out of local wolf management decisions.
“We’re extremely disappointed with the decision considering Idaho has managed a wolf population above federal recovery goals for decades and sustained more-than-adequate wolf populations since Congress removed them from Endangered Species Act protection in 2011,” Fredericks said in a written statement.
Said Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote., “On behalf of Western wolves, we are grateful for the Court’s careful analysis of the merits of the case and decision to uphold the meaning and spirit of the Endangered Species Act. Western states have had ample opportunity to follow the science and ethics in their management of native carnivores but have refused to do so. We look forward to seeing wolves receive the federal protections they deserve under one of our bedrock environmental laws.”
The fight continues.
—Meteor Blades
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GREEN BRIEF
In last week’s Earth Matters, I had a few words about the lies in the Department of Energy’s “Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” DOE chief Chris Wright noted in its introductory letter that “climate change is a challenge — not a catastrophe” and the report itself argued that not only are greenhouse gas emissions a good thing, but climate change also won’t be as economically harmful as six massive reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have scientifically concluded it could be. Actions to address climate should be weighed against costs, the DOE authors assert.
Since then, many more climate scientists have weighed in. As the headline in The Guardian put it— Scientists slam Trump administration climate report as a ‘farce’ full of misinformation. I wish editors would learn the difference between misinformation and disinformation, but I digress.
One of those scientists is Natalie Mahowald at Cornell University. “This is a report written by a couple of scientists who are outliers in their arguments for climate change,” she told the newspaper. “This document does in no way depreciate the value of previous assessments, but rather just cherrypicks the literature to pretend to create a new review.”
In fact, every one of the five people Wright chose to write the critical review is an outlier, and every one of them has been excoriated for sloppy, tendentious, and inaccurate work in the past. That is probably one reason the report was not peer reviewed. Said Andrew Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M University, “If almost any other group of scientists had been chosen, the report would have been dramatically different. The only way to get this report was to pick these authors.”
Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at the climate non-profit Berkeley Earth, noted that the authors had used a chart contained in a paper he wrote but distorted what he actually concluded in the paper.
He wasn’t the only scientist with that complaint. Benjamin Santer, atmospheric scientist (University of East Anglia), told AFP: “It ‘completely misrepresents my work’” regarding the report’s treatment of his findings on stratospheric cooling and climate fingerprinting.
Said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University: “The report cherry‑picks a single tide gauge from my sea-level research … “They haven’t managed to bring anybody else along to think of, there’s still the same set of five people” involved.
Michael Mann, now director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, told Dennis Pillion at Inside Climate News that the DOE report is typical of the minuscule fraction of scientists who say climate change is not that big of a deal.
”All they’ve done is recycle shopworn, discredited climate denier arguments,” Mann said in an email to the Pulitzer-winning website. “They constructed a deeply misleading antiscientific narrative, built on deceptive arguments, misrepresented datasets, and distortion of actual scientific understanding. Then they dressed it up with dubious graphics composed of selective, cherry-picked data. There is nothing scientific about this report whatsoever.”
On Bluesky, Ben Sanderson, research director at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, posted a thread vivisecting the report. “Each chapter follows the same pattern,” he said. “Establish a contrarian position, cherry pick evidence to support that position, then claim that this position is under-represented in climate literature and the IPCC in particular. Include a bunch of references, most of which don’t support the central argument.”
Naomi Oreskes, a science historian and author with Eric M. Conway of the seminal 2010 book Merchants of Doubt, which spotlighted how a handful of scientists used the same playbook to create skepticism about the dangers of tobacco and climate change, said, “With this decision, climate change denial is now the official policy of the U.S. government.”
—Meteor Blades
RELATED: How Trump-Vetted Scientists Are Trying to Shred the Climate Consensus
RESEARCH & STUDIES
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
Will Adding Sugar Cane To US Coca-Cola Further Degrade The Florida Everglades? By Carolyn Fortuna at Clean Technica. Last month Donald Trump pushed for Coca-Cola to switch its U.S. sweetening ingredient from corn syrup to cane sugar. It’s part of a long-term, successful lobbying effort — the sugar industry is renowned for its ample political donations and easy access to the White House. Is it a coincidence that Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. has lashed out at the corn syrup industry, which he has called “poison?” It’s unlikely. Corn syrup is out; sugar cane is in. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said that “both high fructose corn syrup and cane sugar are about 50% fructose, 50% glucose, and have identical metabolic effects.” Florida sugar growers spread millions of dollars in campaign donations each election cycle to state and federal candidates. For decades, the Florida sugar cane lobby has been an adversary of environmental groups, as its production feeds climate change and disrupts the Florida Everglades. Already, behind-the-scenes talk suggests that current US sugar cane production wouldn’t be enough to replace corn syrup in soda. Has the Everglades — again — found itself at the mercy of political machinations?
Copper Mines Close in on Western Apache Sacred Site, and the Forest Protected to Mitigate the Damage by Wyatt Myskow at Inside Climate News. On the banks of the San Pedro River lies one of the American Southwest’s few remaining old-growth mesquite bosques—a streamside forest in more than 3,000 acres of riparian ecosystem that is one of Arizona’s last intact landscapes. Known as the 7B Ranch, the mesquite forest is vital to the area’s biodiversity. It is the centerpiece of a land exchange between Resolution Copper and the federal government that paves the way for the company to dig a massive copper mine roughly 60 miles north that will lead to the destruction of a site sacred to the Western Apache. The San Carlos Apache Tribe has been fighting for years against the proposed Resolution Copper mine and is actively engaged in litigation over it with the federal government. The Trump administration has signaled it will approve the mine once pending litigation over the case is resolved.
The 13-megawatt Salt Wells, Nevada, geothermal plant was built thanks to a Department of Energy investment via the 2009 Recovery Act (the Obama stimulus). The plant is operated by Enel Green Power.
What Makes Geothermal Energy So Special? By Tina Casey at Clean Technica. The new “American Energy Dominance” policy became the law of the land earlier this year, with the aim of supporting U.S. fossil energy production along with nuclear, while stuffing the wind and solar genies back in the bottle. Now along comes geothermal energy to throw a honking big monkey wrench into the works, competing against both nuclear and conventional fuel for a generous slice of the baseload power generation market. If you’re wondering why a renewable resource like geothermal energy is poised to compete for baseload power within the constraints of today’s federal energy policy, that’s a good question. Nevertheless, the American Energy Dominance plan excludes wind and solar from federal support, but it does embrace geothermal energy. The magic word is baseload. Geothermal energy can compete directly against coal and gas for baseload power generation, delivering a reliable stream of electricity on a 24/7 basis regardless of the weather.
RELATED: Here is a detailed webinar on geothermal. The technical stuff is in plain English.
Climate disasters are killing small businesses by Tik Root at Grist. Whether it’s hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, or ice storms, small businesses are more vulnerable to climate shocks than larger businesses, said Shehryar Nabi, a senior research associate at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program. He co-wrote a recent report outlining the hurdles small businesses face from severe weather. They can be hobbled by a range of challenges, from limited preparation resources to a lack of post-disaster financing. “One reason we focused on small businesses here is because of their importance to the U.S. economy,” said Nabi. That was certainly the case in Asheville, a city known for its artists, breweries, and boutiques. Helene not only destroyed homes and upended lives, it sent the region’s economy into a tailspin.
Researcher Alyssa Gehman from the Hakai Institute counts and measures sunflower sea stars in Burke Channel on the Central Coast of British Columbia.
Scientists Pinpoint Cause of Massive Sea Star Die-Offs, and Suspect a Link to Global Warming by Bob Berwyn at Inside Climate News. Outbreaks from ocean pathogens that can be deadly to marine life and even threaten humans are more frequent in overheated waters. After years of scientific sleuthing, a team of West Coast researchers reported that they have identified a particular strain of ocean bacteria that has killed more than 6 billion sea stars since 2013. In a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, they said the die-off was caused by a type of Vibrio bacteria that was previously only known as a pathogen in some shellfish larvae. Vibrio bacteria are more frequently causing problems in a warming world. The bacteria sometimes cause dangerous infections and intestinal illnesses in humans, including cholera. The breakthrough finding will help scientists determine possible conservation or adaptation measures in response to the intensifying consequences of the sea star die-off. Sunflower sea stars, which can grow up to 3 feet across and sprout 24 arms, are critical to West Coast kelp ecosystems, where they devour certain types of sea urchins that can eat through the forests of seaweed if the sea stars don’t check their populations.
When Ships Slow Down, Everybody Wins, Including Endangered Whales by Susan Bohan at Sierra. An incentive-based program protecting whales from ship strikes also reduces air pollution. More than a thousand cargo ships slowed down last year as they neared the California coast in areas where endangered whales migrate and feed, part of a voluntary effort to avoid deadly whale strikes. The inducement to take it slower and thus delay their arrival at port? A sculpted award shaped like a whale’s tail, and kudos for environmental stewardship. A coalition of national marine sanctuaries, air quality districts, environmental organizations, and other nonprofits runs an incentive-based, voluntary program called Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies. It began in 2014 to reduce ship strikes of endangered blue, humpback, and fin whales, as well as gray whales, along with lowering emissions. Every year since, participation has increased and now includes the world’s largest shipping companies. “They’re very proud to say they are cooperating with this program,” said Jacqueline Moore, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. “They love their Whale Tail awards.”
WEEKLY BLUESKY SKEET
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🧵 Dear Republican lawmakers,
Canada has the largest intact boreal forest on the planet.
An increasingly hotter world due to #ClimateChange makes longer dry seasons, far larger wildfires & yes, more smoke. No amount of “raking” fixes it. The scientists warned of exactly this for a very long time /1
— Bentley (@bigclimate.bsky.social) 2025-08-07T02:11:25.831Z
ECOPINION
We Need Bold Protests, Says ‘Stop Shopping’ Activist Rev. Billy Talen. John R. Platt at The Revelator conducts an interview with the often-arrested social activist, who discusses his court case against Monsanto and the lessons it offers for other protestors. Around the country a new wave of legislation has attempted to criminalize people speaking out about environmental and social issues or standing up against governments and corporations. Last month legislatures in Minnesota advanced bills that would have made it illegal for protestors to block highways or associate with people who want to damage oil pipelines. A similar bill in Louisiana also aims to criminalize “conspiracy” to trespass on pipeline property. These most recent bills join dozens of similar legislative attempts that have been proposed in at least 20 states over the past few years. To date all of these proposed bills have either not passed or been modified to remove unconstitutional language, but one thing about them remains clear: They’re what the ACLU calls a nationwide attempt at “chilling protest.” But that makes the need for protest even more important, says Reverend Billy Talen, the head of the singing social activist group known as the Stop Shopping Choir. Talen and his team —perhaps best known for their masks of extinct frogs or their song “Monsanto Is the Devil” — have been jailed dozens of times around the country for their bold and purposefully over-the-top protests. The arrests don’t seem to slow them down: They’ve been arrested nine times this year alone.
EPA removal of vehicle emissions limits won’t stop the shift to electric vehicles, but will make it harder by Alan Jenn at The Conversation. As a scholar of how vehicle emissions contribute to climate change, I know that the science behind the endangerment finding hasn’t changed. If anything, the evidence has grown that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and threatening people’s health and safety. Heat waves, flooding, sea-level rise and wildfires have only worsened in the decade and a half since the EPA’s ruling. Regulations over the years have cut emissions from power generation, leaving transportation as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. The scientific community agrees that vehicle emissions are harmful and should be regulated. The public also agrees, and has indicated strong preferences for cars that pollute less, including both more efficient gas-burning vehicles and electric-powered ones. Consumers have also been drawn to electric vehicles thanks to other benefits such as performance, operation cost and innovative technologies. That is why I believe the EPA’s move will not stop the public and commercial transition to electric vehicles, but it will make that shift harder, slower and more expensive for everyone.
Fighting Wildfires Is Hellish Work. It’s Even Worse Under Trump by Kate Aronoff at The New Republic. As the Trump administration’s climate denial collides with its quest to incapacitate the federal workforce, wildfire fighters are taking a hit. Amid disturbing headlines about firefighters being forced to scrub toilets because of staffing shortages, the White House has projected confidence. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins—whose department oversees the U.S. Forest Service’s 11,000- person firefighting workforce—boasted earlier this summer about “far outpacing the rate of hiring and onboarding over the past three years and in the previous administration.” The department now claims to have met 99 percent of its hiring goals for wildland firefighters. The reality doesn’t remotely support her declaration. Last year, the U.S. Forest service was already facing a 45 percent attrition rate among permanent employees. Reporting from ProPublica last week revealed that more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs—up to 27 percent of those positions—were still vacant as of July 17. A recent survey by Forest Service fire managers in California found that 26 percent of engine captain positions and 42 percent of engineer positions were vacant. ProPublica further revealed a frantic letter circulated among high-ranking Forest Service officials by its chief, Tom Schultz. “As expected, the 2025 Fire Year is proving to be extremely challenging,” he wrote. “We know the demand for resources outpaces their availability.”
RELATED: ”Help is not on the way” by Kylie Mohr at High Country News. As fire season ramps up, thousands of Forest Service firefighting positions are vacant.
Gish Galloping Off The Climate Cliff by Brad Johnson at Hill Heat. There are very few practicing climate scientists who are climate deniers, for obvious reasons. The few that are still alive today include evangelical conservatives John Christy1 and Roy Spencer and oil-industry consultant Judith Curry. And there are a small number of climate deniers with Ph.D.s in other fields, like Canadian evangelical economist Ross McKitrick and BP physicist Steve Koonin.2 For decades, the Republican climate denial machine puffed up these deniers’ influence by having them testify over and over again before Congress.3 The authoritarian Trump regime is no longer concerned by Congressional power, civil society, or public opinion, even as Americans die by fire and flood. So the Trump Department of Energy, which is run by climate denier and fracking executive Chris Wright,4 named the five aforementioned deniers the “Climate Working Group” On Tuesday, they published an official climate-denial review.5
Heather McTeer Toney
The global plastics treaty must move forward, with or without the US by Heather McTeer Toney at Climate Home News. (Toney is executive director of the Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, which aims to halt expansion the petrochemical industry’s expansion.) While the Trump administration sides with the petrochemical industry, it is time for ordinary people to speak up about plastic pollution. Right now, representatives from around the world are gathering in Geneva for the next round of negotiations on the Global Plastics Treaty. Here’s what you may not hear in the official talking points: plastics don’t just magically appear out of thin air. They’re made from fossil fuel-based chemicals called petrochemicals, which are threatening our health, our environment, and the climate. Yet, the producers of these chemical compounds and plastics are being propped up and protected despite striking evidence of how damaging they really are. So we’re clear, this isn’t just about water bottles and straws in the ocean. It’s everywhere—from the air we breathe to our carpets, laundry detergent, and clothing—and it’s killing us.
RELATED: Why the World Is Divided on Plastic as UN Treaty Talks Restart
OTHER GREEN STUFF
Water Utilities Are Using Solar Panels to Cut Evaporation Losses • Toxic Tons: The Largest Flow of Illegal Mercury to the Amazon Exposed • Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis • Environmentalists target biogas as ‘false’ climate solution • Jack Link’s beef: How the snack giant is lobbying Trump and fighting the MAHA movement • Hundreds of Old EV Batteries Have New Jobs in Texas: Stabilizing the Grid • Judge Rules Rocky Mountain Wolves Wrongly Denied Endangered Species Protections