At the beginning of September 2026, the Trump administration announced that a new Executive Order has been signed on the grounds of “protecting and fully supporting America’s ranchers.” The new Order directs the Secretary of the Interior to determine whether gray wolves or Mexican wolves meet the criteria for delisting or downlisting under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). If the wolves meet the criteria, the Trump administration requests that the Secretary of Interior begin the process of delisting or downlisting these species, who share a long history of unstable populations, as their conservation statuses have long been shaped by unwarranted persecution and ongoing political and ecological challenges. This is all despite the percentage of cattle killed by wolves in the U.S. typically accounting for less than 1% of all cattle deaths in areas where both wolves and cattle coexist.
Gray Wolves in the United States
Over the last century, gray wolves have been fighting for their lives in the very habitats in which they evolved to live. Before the 1920s, gray wolves were once among the most widely distributed wild mammals in North America. From the 1920s-1960s, threats including habitat loss, competition with humans for prey like deer and elk, and government‑sponsored eradication programs led to devastating population declines. By the 1960s, wolves were eliminated from most of their range within the U.S. When the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was passed in 1973, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) listed gray wolves as Endangered, which halted large‑scale persecution and initiated recovery plans. Shortly thereafter, populations began to grow.
From the 1980s-1990s, gray wolves were reintroduced from Canada into Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, while Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico. Cautiously on the rebound, wolf populations then expanded into Wisconsin, Michigan, and parts of the northern Rockies. Despite these encouraging trends in population growth, in the early 2000s, individual states including Montana and Idaho adopted state management plans of their own, which allowed regulated public hunting and trapping seasons. Later, throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, the USFWS delisted select populations of gray wolves based on range. In 2020, the USFWS announced it was removing gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act.
Each time wolf protections are rescinded, we see the same devastating trend: more intentional wolf deaths. For example, according to the International Wolf Center, a record number of Mexican wolves were found dead in 2018; five Mexican wolves were found dead in New Mexico in November alone, bringing the total to 17 wolves in under one year, which was the most killed in any single year since the reintroduction began in 1998. In 2014, since their delisting in 2012, approximately 219 gray wolves were killed under Wyoming’s management plan. In December 2014, Wisconsin and Minnesota’s wolf hunting seasons recorded 154 and 272 wolves killed, respectively. In 2013, Minnesota’s first regulated public hunting and trapping wolf season closed with a total harvest of 413 wolves. In 2013, Minnesota’s second-ever wolf hunting season ended in December with 237 wolves killed. In Wisconsin, the second regulated season ended in December with 257 wolves killed. In 2012, Wisconsin’s first regulated season closed with a total harvest of 117 wolves. In the same year, Wyoming’s first annual hunting season closed with 42 wolves killed.
According to the Wolf Conservation Center, the most recent population estimates suggest that 7,929 gray wolves remain in fragmented populations across the mainland U.S. (with an additional 7,000-11,000 in Alaska). Just 317 Mexican gray wolves were reported living in Arizona and New Mexico. We know what happens when wolves are eliminated from an ecosystem when they were all but eradicated in the early 1900s, and none of it is beneficial. Without wolves, detrimental ecological imbalance ensues; herbivore numbers (like deer and elk) surge, leading to overgrazing of vegetation, habitat degradation, and a decline in plant diversity and other animal species that depend on vegetation for survival (including beavers, birds, insects, and fish). River systems also become altered, which can negatively change water flow and impact aquatic habitats.
Advocating for Gray Wolves
Today, sadly, gray wolves occupy less than 10% of their historic range in the continental U.S. While populations exist in the western Great Lakes, northern Rockies, parts of the Pacific Northwest, and the Mexican Southwest, they remain vulnerable to hunting, habitat fragmentation, and political challenges that threaten to remove individuals from the wild as quickly as they were repopulated. Join us in advocating for the wolves’ protection; ecosystems cannot thrive – or even function properly – without their apex predator maintaining balance in the way that nature intended. We must continue fighting for the species that never gave up, even when faced with the highest level of opposition.
You can help by visiting our Action Center to contact your lawmakers on important wildlife protection issues or by symbolically adopting a wolf to support our work to protect them.
For the Animals,
Dear Reader,