On September 4, President Trump signed the "Supporting America's Ranchers" executive order. It gives Interior Secretary Doug Burgum 90 days, until early December, to decide whether gray wolves and Mexican wolves should lose Endangered Species Act protection. It also directs Interior to send Congress legislation to delist both species and to push states to drop their own wolf protections.

 

This is part of a much broader attack on the ESA. In July, federal agencies threw out the decades-old definition of "harm" that protected the habitat endangered species need to survive, and ended automatic protections for newly listed threatened species. In Congress, the House has already passed a bill stripping gray wolves of federal protection, and a bill to delist the Mexican wolf is waiting on a floor vote, even though only about 317 Mexican wolves remain in the wild. This spring, House leadership tried to force through a sweeping rewrite of the ESA and pulled it only after a wave of public pressure.

 

Send a letter to your representative urging them to save wolves and defend the Endangered Species Act.