Press Releases

September 16, 2021 (Washington, D.C.) – Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) today welcomed the announcement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that it “will initiate a comprehensive status review of the gray wolf in the western U.S.,” but expressed concern that delay would lead to unnecessary deaths of the recently delisted species. Beyer led a bipartisan House delegation of 85 Representatives in July urging the Department of the Interior to revisit the Trump Administration’s decision to delist the gray wolf. 

“This is an important step towards increasing protections for America’s population of gray wolves, which were wrongly delisted for political reasons by the previous administration, but it sets in place a process which I fear may move too slowly,” said Beyer. “I approve of U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s decision to initiate a status review, which I believe was clearly merited, and which I hope will lead to increased protections for this critical species. However, I worry that many more gray wolves will be killed while the review moves forward. Both the science and the mass killings of gray wolves since their delisting support relisting them as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act now.”