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 Wolves and dogs diverged from a common ancestor at least 15,000 years ago.Credit: stock.xpert |
Andrew Wetzler is director of the Land & Wildlife Program at the NRDC. This Op-Ed originally appeared on the NRDC blog Switchboard. Wetzler contributed this article to LiveScience’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Tuesday marked the official end of the public comment period on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed nation-wide regulation removing the gray wolf from the federal list of endangered species.
The proposed regulation is the culmination of the administration’s push to finally strip every gray wolf in the country (outside of a small population in Arizona and New Mexico) of federal Endangered Species Act protections. If the Fish and Wildlife Service gets its way, not only will established wolf populations in states like Idaho and Minnesota continue to be unprotected, but any wolves who make it to other states — California, Maine, Utah or Colorado, for example — will also be completely at the mercy of local governments.