What To Know About Rep. Lauren Boebert's Wolf-Delisting Bill
- Emily Evans
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
By Amy Porter, Director of Conservation
In the noise of today's world, it's easy to lose track of important legislature that is being proposed in the nation's capitol. Here, we discuss the potential impacts of Boebert's H.R. 845 bill.
What H.R. 845 Would Do
Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert’s H.R. 845 bill, which is titled Pet and Livestock Protection Act, would remove federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for gray wolves across most of the lower 48 states, excluding the Mexican wolf subspecies.
The bill would effectively reinstate a 2020 federal rule that delisted gray wolves nationwide - a rule that was later overturned by a federal court for failing to adequately consider the species’ status across its full range. Rather than revisiting the issue through the ESA’s established science-based review process, H.R. 845 would legislatively impose delisting and prevent courts from reviewing the decision altogether.
Support for H.R. 845 (Delisting)
Supporters of the bill argue that wolves have sufficiently recovered, particularly in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes regions, making state wildlife agencies and local stakeholders best equipped for managing wolf populations and addressing conflicts with livestock. More generally, the large number of species listed under the ESA means that conservation efforts for each are inherently limited by available agency funding, staff capacity, and political will.
Some folks believe that these limitations force us to make hard decisions about priorities and tradeoffs, and that wolves (due to their relatively positive population growth since the 1980s and 1990s) should be deprioritized in order to focus limited resources on other more sensitive and threatened species. People who have this perspective often contend that the ESA lacks reasonable or context-specific thresholds for what could or should be considered a “recovery success,” and therefore argue that the ESA should be updated, amended, or otherwise circumvented.
Concerns with H.R. 845
One troubling provision of the bill is the elimination of judicial review - an element central to the bill’s appeal for supporters. This would make wolf delisting final and impervious to legal challenge, meaning courts could no longer overturn or scrutinize the decision, even if it disregarded scientific evidence or failed to meet statutory requirements.
Eliminating judicial review can intensify pendulum swings - listing, delisting, and relisting - because it prevents early or incremental correction of flawed decisions. Without this safeguard, consequences such as population declines or increased killings can only be addressed through major political or emergency actions. This would in turn create confusion over rules and regulations as stakeholders face shifting protections and management requirements. While removing judicial review may reduce the frequency of court-initiated reversals, it can increase the severity of any swings, as mistakes persist longer and eventual corrections are more abrupt and disruptive.
The proposal to delist wolves also comes in the absence of a comprehensive National Wolf Recovery Plan. Despite decades of conservation efforts, there is no unified, science-based strategy guiding wolf recovery across the species’ historic range that still contains viable habitat.
In February 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced plans to develop the nation’s first National Wolf Recovery Plan by December 2025. However, in early November of that year, the agency reversed course, stating that a national plan was unnecessary because it now considers federal ESA protections “no longer appropriate” for wolves and concluded that a recovery plan “would not promote their conservation.”
Where Wolf Haven Stands
Wolf Haven recognizes that while some wolf populations are stable, others remain in the early stages of recovery (such as states like California and Colorado) or have regions with high-quality wolf habitat, like Washington’s South Cascades and Olympic peninsula. True recovery is more than population numbers in select regions. It depends on long-term resilience supported by habitat connectivity, genetic diversity, and the ability of wolves to recolonize suitable habitat. This is precisely where a national recovery plan would be most helpful: setting clear, science-based recovery targets and identifying pathways for wolves to recolonize suitable (and currently unoccupied) habitat to achieve durable, long-term recovery.
When wolves lose federal protections, management authority is returned to the states, and state plans vary widely in strength and scope. Wolf Haven believes that Washington has one of the strongest regional recovery frameworks in the nation, and our state plan is an important tool for guiding wolf recovery and mitigating conflict. It is important to note, however, that the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf populations (Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, eastern Washington, and eastern Oregon) lost federal protections through an act of Congress in 2011. Since then, they have been managed under state authority, meaning the H.R. 845 legislation would not change wolf management for those populations.
Some states, such as Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, permit egregious wolf hunting and trapping practices. Those policies are already in place and would remain unchanged under this bill. Federal delisting would likely not lead to immediate impacts on wolves in Washington, but could have significant consequences in other states, notably Wisconsin, which mandates a wolf hunt when ESA protections are lifted. The last time federal protections were removed, Wisconsin hunters killed 218 wolves in just three days, nearly doubling the state’s annual quota of 119.
Wolf Haven acknowledges the perspective that limited funding, staff capacity, and political attention may necessitate prioritizing conservation efforts for species that are more highly vulnerable to habitat loss and climate change, and lack the ecological flexibility to adapt. From this perspective, wolves are relatively resilient wide-ranging generalists that can survive in a variety of habitats, while endangered species such as the marbled murrelet, spotted owl, and Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly face could face irreversible declines without immediate targeted intervention.
We strongly advocate for wolf recovery grounded in science, habitat conservation, connectivity, and coexistence strategies. Wolf conservation is fundamentally a social challenge, shaped by complex human dynamics. Feelings of marginalization, mistrust, and misinformation can fracture communities, escalate conflicts, and prevent a shared vision for coexistence. Without genuine collaboration, efforts to recover and coexist with wolves are unlikely to succeed.
In response to these challenges, Wolf Haven considers its most effective contribution to wolf recovery to be focused on policy engagement through the Wolf Advisory Group and community-based initiatives, particularly our Wolf Wise Community program, which promotes shared learning, understanding, and enduring collaboration to mitigate conflicts. For more information, email wildlife@wolfhaven.org.