Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center.
This month, a lone gray wolf was spotted in Los Angeles County for the first time in more than a century. That sighting would have been unimaginable a generation ago. In the mid-1990s, when endangered gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, the only state in the Lower 48 with a population greater than a few dozen was Minnesota. Today, more than 6,000 gray wolves roam 10 states — up from about 1,500. It’s a spectacular success story but also a reminder that conservation works best when the federal government treats private landowners as partners, not obstacles.
Such recovery is as remarkable as it is rare. Only 3 percent of listed species under the Endangered Species Act have fully recovered, and few are even measurably improving. One reason is structural: Federal law imposes significant regulatory burdens on private landowners who accommodate species and conserve their habitats. These burdens discourage proactive recovery efforts, penalize progress and can lead to unintended consequences that set population recovery back.
Consider the plight of the red-cockaded woodpecker. Though the bird was once prevalent in forests from Florida to New Jersey and as far west as Texas, the population declined significantly over the past century due to lost habitat. When the species was tagged as endangered under the ESA in 1973, federal officials strictly limited timber harvesting to protect old-growth pines in areas occupied by the bird. Economists later observed that the strict regulation had encouraged private forest owners to harvest their trees before they could mature, attract woodpeckers and trigger regulatory consequences — a phenomenon known as preemptive habitat destruction.
To its credit, the federal government recognized the perverse incentives it had created and adopted a more collaborative approach. In 1995, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service partnered with private landowners to create the first “safe harbor” agreement. Safe harbor agreements granted private landowners willing to manage their lands and conserve habitat an exemption from future regulation outside the scope of the original agreement. These agreements secured the cooperation of hundreds of landowners. In 2024, the woodpecker’s status was upgraded from endangered to threatened, which the Biden administration chalked up to forest landowners’ voluntary conservation and restoration of red-cockaded woodpecker habitat.
Successful population recovery can also create challenges when it comes to predators such as wolves. When wolves expand into a new area, ranchers bear the cost. They must hire range riders, pen animals each night and install deterrent fencing. But these investments only reduce risks; they don’t eliminate them. Cattle ranchers will still inevitably walk into a pasture and find the remains of calves they have spent months raising. Ranchers who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect their herds can still lose dozens of cows to wolves each year. The cost of destroyed livestock and wolf deterrents can make it difficult for ranchers to stay in business.
Nonprofit organizations and state governments have found ways to cover those direct costs of living with recovering populations. When gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, Defenders of Wildlife rallied environmentalists to contribute to a fund to compensate ranchers for lost livestock. When Colorado reintroduced gray wolves in 2023, it copied the Defenders’ model. But the cost keeps growing along with the wolf population — ranchers filed more than $1 million worth of claims last year, nearly triple the state’s allotted budget of $350,000. California has spent millions of dollars reimbursing ranchers since 2021.
Policymakers need to consider what comes after a population of predators recovers and aim to limit conflicts and costs. Today’s wolf problems are largely driven by policies that encouraged species recovery, but only to a point. When gray wolves in the Northern Rockies were removed from federal protection in 2009, the U.S. government appeared to assume the recovered population would obediently remain within the region. But wolves don’t recognize regulatory lines. As they dispersed and repopulated other Western states, federal regulations considered the wolves as endangered again in these jurisdictions.
A similar story is playing out in Colorado’s efforts to reintroduce gray wolves. Learning from the reintroduction in Yellowstone, neighboring states objected. They argued that wolves would roam into their jurisdictions and trigger endangered-level regulations. Colorado moved ahead on the condition that any wolves that expanded beyond the state would be captured and returned. This resolution may reduce conflict, but it also caps wolf recovery. Better to reform the regulations that created the conflict in the first place.
The return of gray wolves and the revival of the red-cockaded woodpecker are significant achievements. But they are also reminders that conservation efforts impose real costs and lead to new challenges. When policy exacerbates those costs and penalizes stewardship, species flounder. When policy encourages voluntary conservation and plans for a future after recovery, it benefits endangered species and private landowners.
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