Trump orders Department of the Interior to finalize gray wolf’s listing status

Washington, D.C.; September 4, 2026: Today, President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to make a final determination on the listing status of the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

“During the previous administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s own scientists found that western gray wolves no longer meet the ESA’s definition of endangered or threatened,” said Mark Miller, Director of Pacific Legal Foundation’s Environment and Natural Resources practice group. “The ESA doesn’t give the federal government a license to keep that finding in a drawer while it continues to bind the hands of ranchers, farmers, and property owners who simply want to put their land to productive use. When the government’s own data show that a species no longer meets the statutory definition of endangered or threatened, the law requires delisting, not indefinite regulation in search of a new justification.”

Pacific Legal Foundation has long fought federal overreach under the ESA. In Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, PLF represented Louisiana landowner Edward Poitevent after the government declared 1,500 acres of his family’s land “critical habitat” for a frog that had not been seen in the state in half a century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Poitevent’s favor in 2018.

“The Endangered Species Act is supposed to protect a species only when necessary: once a species no longer meets the Act’s definition of threatened or endangered, the federal government steps out of the picture,” said Joe Luppino-Esposito, Director of Federal Policy at Pacific Legal Foundation. “Otherwise, it’s just government asserting totally unnecessary, permanent control. The nationwide gray wolf delisting effort dates back to the Obama administration, and the continued work to do so has been bipartisan. The Department of the Interior should look to its own past findings and deliver the regulatory relief that ranchers, farmers, and property owners have been waiting on by reviewing the listing status of the gray wolf.”

Pacific Legal Foundation’s work on the ESA is part of its Environment and Natural Resources practice, which defends Americans’ freedom to use their land and natural resources productively.