Cascadia Wildlands, along with a broad coalition of conservation groups, has filed suit over the Fish and Wildlife Service’s failure to list the wolverine on the Endangered Species Act list. The Fish and Wildlife Service officially withdrew its proposal to list the species after applied political pressure from a handful of western states. Only 250-300 wolverines call the contiguous United States home, living in small populations scattered across the west. A unanimous panel of Fish and Wildilfe scientists had previously recognized serious threats to the wolverine’s continued existence, acknowledging that the greatest threat to the species’ survival in the United States is habitat loss due to climate change.
The suit was filed on October 20, 2014, and the coalition is represented by the Western Environmental Law Center. This case carries important ramifications for other species impacted by climate change as federal regulators have generally relied upon out-of-date or ineffective climate change models. Wolverines have been found in Washington, Oregon, and California.
To see more background on the wolverine and this lawsuit, click here.
A copy of the complaint can be found here.