Climate change fears put wolverine on endangered species watch

The solitary, aggressive wolverine faces few threats in the wild — even humans tend to give the remote creatures a wide berth — but it does need snow to create dens.

Hence a federal judge’s ruling this week ordering the Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its 2014 decision against listing the wolverine under the Endangered Species Act — because the creature is under attack by global warming.

“No greater level of certainty is needed to see the writing on the wall for this snow-dependent species standing squarely in the path of global climate change,” U.S. District Court Judge Dana L. Christensen said in his 85-page ruling.

The ruling came as a pivotal win for wildlife groups in their 20-year battle to list the wolverine, but also sent shivers through those fighting the long arm of the federal government. If the wolverine can earn a spot on the endangered species list based almost solely on possible impacts of climate change, say critics, that signals open season on private property rights and state control of lands.

“The Endangered Species Act is a natural place to take over the management of private property,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment.

“It’s already being done without climate change,” he said. “So now you can say, ’We have this species’ habitat here, and we think that climate change would remove the habitat north to a higher elevation, and therefore we not only have to protect this habitat, but we have to protect this future habitat.’ Which is based entirely on speculation.”

Like the polar bear, which has become the unofficial symbol of the climate change movement, wolverines rely on snow for reproduction. In fact, wolverines are sometimes referred to as “southern polar bears,” according to wildlife groups.

A dozen wildlife organizations sued in 2014 after the Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the species. Only about 300 wolverines are believed to inhabit the Lower 48 states, primarily in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, but much larger populations dwell in Canada, Alaska and Russia.

In his ruling, Judge Christensen, chief judge for the District of Montana, chided the Fish and Wildlife Service for reversing its earlier course to list the wolverine as endangered or threatened, suggesting that the agency had done so for political reasons.

“Based on the record, the Court suspects that a possible answer to this question can be found in the immense political pressure that was brought to bear on this issue, particularly by a handful of eastern states,” Judge Christensen said. “The listing decision in this case involves climate science, and climate science evokes strong reactions.”

He also urged the agency to “take action at the earliest possible, defensible point in time to protect against the loss of biodiversity within our reach as a nation. For the wolverine, that time is now.”

Officials in a half-dozen Western states had challenged a listing decision, arguing that state initiatives to bolster the wolverine population had been effective, and pushing back against climate models described as “untested,” “unverified” and “unvalidated.”

“Listing based solely on climate change does not allow the Service to develop a meaningful recovery plan for the species,” said the Idaho Office of Species Conservation in its comments.

The Fish and Wildlife Service had raised concerns about studies projecting a decline in snowpack in the northwest, where wolverines make their homes in high altitudes far from civilization, concluding that “climate change models are unable to reliably predict snowfall amounts and snow-cover persistence in wolverine denning locations.”

Even so, Judge Christensen said the models represent the “best available science,” the standard for an endangered species listing, and called the decision to overrule them “arbitrary and capricious.”

“The court sent a clear message to the service: Don’t let politics trump science,” said Matthew Bishop, a Western Environmental Law Center lawyer who represented conservation groups in the lawsuit. “The service cannot ignore the published literature and advice of its own biologists when making important listing decisions.”

Added Bethany Cotton, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians, “We call on the agency to stop playing politics and start living up to its mandate to protect our country’s most imperiled species.”

Mr. Ebell said the irony is that the Obama administration has actually moved aggressively to incorporate climate change into its land-use decisions.

“A judge is telling the administration they need to do more, even though they’re inserting climate change into every land-management decision possible,” Mr. Ebell said. “So this is just further support for what they’re trying to do. I think we need to take this very seriously, and I think the Congress ought to be looking at it.”

Private property advocates warn that the climate change argument, used in conjunction with the Endangered Species Act, could ultimately lead to the shuttering of power plants, oil fields or coal mines in the name of protecting any number of species.

“If you make vague and unknown climate change a determinant of endangerment, rather than some specific threat that can be remedied, then the agencies have carte blanche to list anything and everything and to control everything,” said R.J. Smith, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research. “And they have total power.”