State management is the rule, not the exception, of wildlife management in the U.S. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) displaces it only when the best available science shows a species is endangered or threatened, thereby requiring federal oversight. That principle is at the heart of PERC’s amicus brief in Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which argues that political and policy disagreements with state management cannot override the ESA’s science-based standard.
The case concerns gray wolves in the western United States, a species whose recovery is one of the ESA’s signature success stories. In the late 1970s, only about 1,200 wolves remained in the lower 48. Today, there are more than 6,000 wolves, which are biologically connected to nearly 30,000 wolves in Canada—a remarkable recovery. In Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Utah, wolves reached biological recovery goals over a decade ago, were delisted from the ESA, and have been managed successfully by the states since. This population remains well above recovery benchmarks and has expanded into additional states.
Yet, the district court treated that success not as grounds to trust the ESA’s recovery framework, but as a reason to doubt it. According to the court, delisting wolves and returning them to state management creates a cycle in which states drive them back toward extinction. But as PERC’s brief explains, this is patently false. No recovered and delisted species has ever backslid under state management and required relisting.
That matters because the ESA depends on incentives and cooperation. States, landowners, and local communities are more likely to support conservation when success leads to greater flexibility and a return to state management. If recovery simply triggers more litigation, more federal control, and ever-shifting standards, those incentives begin to disappear.
PERC’s brief also argues that the district court departed from basic administrative-law principles by second-guessing the Fish and Wildlife Service’s scientific judgments. Courts are supposed to review agency expertise deferentially, especially when agencies make predictive and technical judgments about wildlife populations. This decision did the opposite.
Finally, the brief challenges the district court’s interpretation of the phrase “significant portion of [a species] range.” Properly read, that phrase refers to a species’ current range, not every acre of historical habitat it once occupied. Otherwise, listing decisions become backward-looking and untethered from present biological risk.
The ESA works best when it focuses on actual extinction risk, respects agency expertise, and preserves incentives for recovery. PERC’s brief urges the Ninth Circuit to do just that and reverse the decision.
