At the end of last year, the people of Colorado have voted to reintroduce wolves to the state by 2023. It should be noted that a wolf has been collared in the state in the last few months. It came from a neighbouring state, and therefore clearly wolves would return on their own eventually.
The proposal squeaked across the line with 50.4% of the vote. Now, this decision is complicated by Trumps foolish move to delist wolves throughout the USA, despite their current position. Estimates of the number of wolves in the USA when settlers arrived, range from 250,000 up to 2 million. Even if we assume the low end of the range, the current wolf population of the lower 48 states in the USA is just 6000, a number that we can safely say is at the most, roughly 2% of historical numbers.
How in any world can that be considered a recovered population?
Biden has already order the USA wildlife and fish services to review this delisting, though within a week they came back and said that they were ignoring the order and that Trumps order was legal.
Apart from the absurd position that Trump could unilaterally make the decision, but that Biden could not undo it, this review was clearly not carried out and the report after less than a week was cursory and dismissive.
It should be noted that this is all being done on the back of trumps acting interior secretary. Bidens nomination is close to getting approved, and can then set about undoing the worst of the foolish non-scientific decisions that were made under Trump.
I have made this point before, but it bears repeating. Many of the organisations and laws protections wildlife and the natural world have been made under Republican administrations. Trumps attack on the natural world is not a Republican priority. As such one would hope that Republicans will assist in undoing the damage that they allowed Trump to make. This will require them to stop fearing a failed one term president – time will tell if this is to happen.
