JUNEAU (AP) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans Monday to review whether the Southeast Alaska wolf population merits Endangered Species Act protections.
In 2016, the Fish and Wildlife Service determined the wolf did not warrant such protections.
The agency said Monday that a petition from conservation groups to protect the Alexander Archipelago wolf included information indicating protections may be warranted due to potential threats associated with logging, illegal and legal trapping and hunting, climate change impacts and loss of genetic diversity.
The agency said it is initiating a status review to determine if protections are warranted.
The wolves are found in the coastal rainforests of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. A petition filed last year by the Center for Biological Diversity, Alaska Rainforest Defenders and Defenders of Wildlife raised particular concerns about the wolves in Alaska and on Prince of Wales Island.
Conservationists contend that recent federal proposals to end large-scale, old-growth timber sales in the Tongass National Forest and to reverse a Trump administration decision to lift restrictions on logging and road-building in the forest don’t erase the concerns for the wolf’s habitat and population. They also cite wolf numbers, impacts from logging in the forest and on state lands and other factors as concerns.
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