Federal judge’s ruling on wolf protection has no immediate effect in Eastern Oregon

Published 7:44 am Wednesday, August 6, 2025

A federal judge on Tuesday, Aug. 5, ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its decision last year that gray wolves in several states, including the eastern one-third of Oregon, don’t need protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The ruling by Judge Donald W. Molloy in Montana doesn’t have any immediate effect on the status of wolves in Eastern Oregon, said Michelle Dennehy, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Wolves east of a line formed by Highways 395, 78 and 95 — an area that includes all of Baker, Union and Wallowa counties, most of Grant County and part of Umatilla County — continue to be managed by the ODFW and are not under federal protection.

The state’s wolf management plan gives ranchers more flexibility in dealing with wolves that attack or threaten their livestock compared with areas where wolves are protected by the federal law.

About 75% of Oregon’s wolves — ODFW pegged the statewide population at a minimum of 204 at the end of 2024 — live in the northeast corner, although the animals have spread over the past several years to central and southern Oregon.

Wolves west of those three highways in Oregon are under federal protection.

Molloy ordered the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its decision, but the ruling doesn’t confer ESA protection for wolves in Eastern Oregon or in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, all of which have larger wolf populations than Oregon.

Wolf proponents, who contend the animals need federal protection throughout the West, lauded Molloy’s ruling.

“Judge Molloy wholly rejected nearly every argument put forth by the Fish and Wildlife Service in their briefs and oral arguments,” said Kate Schultz, senior attorney for the Center for a Humane Economy and a lead counsel in the legal challenge to the agency’s decision. “This decision was a thorough repudiation of the agency’s handling of wolves, and it is a continuation of a long pattern of cases in which courts have found that the federal government has violated federal law and failed to properly protect wolves in the United States.”

Wolf advocates have focused more on how Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have managed wolves than on Oregon’s strategy.

Those other three states, unlike Oregon, allow wolf hunting.

Wolves were extirpated in Oregon around World War II, after the state paid bounties on wolves in the first half of the 20th century.

The federal government released wolves in Idaho in the mid 1990s, and the animals migrated into Oregon. The first confirmed wolf was tracked in Baker County in 1999.

Oregon’s minimum wolf population — ODFW officials say there are more wolves than the annual figure — has increased from 29 in 2011 to 204 in the most recent census.

Wolves in the eastern third of the state have been managed by the state rather than the federal government since 2011.

Earlier this year, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill that increases the compensation that livestock owners can receive when ODFW determines that wolves killed, or likely killed, cattle and other livestock. The payments can be up to five times of market value, with a cap of $25,000 per animal.

The state allocates money to counties, who set up committees to distribute money to landowners both as compensation for livestock killed by wolves, and for nonlethal deterrents such as fencing and hiring people to patrol where livestock are grazing.