WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump initiated a review on the status of Mexican gray wolves on the Endangered Species List in an executive order earlier this month, despite the species’ population count falling short of the minimum requirement.

It's a move conservationists argue ignores science and threatens to remove protection of Mexican wolves in order to appease the ranching industry, which has advocated against the species for decades.

“The Trump executive order is just a more extreme example of openly putting politics above science,” said Carlos Carroll, an ecologist who studies the population growth of gray wolves.

According to Trump’s executive order, the Secretary of the Interior has 90 days from Sept. 4 to decide whether the Mexican gray wolf species is healthy enough to be downlisted to the “threatened” status or be removed off the Endangered Species list altogether.

“FWS will be evaluating all applicable science, existing laws and the ESA listing status of Gray and Mexican Wolves,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service said in a written statement to Cronkite News. “The Executive Order does not change the current threatened or endangered status of any wolf populations.”

While the executive order does not immediately change the status of the species, Carroll and other conservationists have long voiced concerns about the long-term health of the wolf species if their endangered status is touched too soon. 

As of 2025, there were 319 Mexican gray wolves living in the United States, between Arizona and New Mexico. For the past 50 years, the gray wolf subspecies has been marked as “endangered” on the list, giving them federal protection, along with federally initiated programs which assist with reintroduction measures and population monitoring.

To be downlisted from “endangered” to the “threatened” tier, the wolves must maintain a U.S. population average of 320 or more over the course of four years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. To be removed off the list completely, the wolves must average a population of 320 in the U.S. and 200 in Mexico for at least eight years; numbers that have not yet been reached.

“We still want to know the genetic health of the wild population before removing protections,”said Craig Miller, an Arizona senior representative at the Defenders of Wildlife 

The FWS’s own data show the Mexican gray wolves have not reached the population stability required for their endangered status to be revised in any capacity. They have averaged an estimated population of 276 over four years and 222 over eight years in the U.S., falling short of the required averages.

And based on their own population modeling, reaching a steady 320 population count in the United States is necessary for the species’ resiliency without federal intervention, according to the FWS Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan.

An earlier research study commissioned by the FWS in 2013 found that a wolf population of 750 over an eight year period was more likely to facilitate a self-sustaining species.

Carroll, who was one of the ecologists who worked on the 2013 study, said the agency dismissed the findings and hired a new team of researchers who decided a wolf population of 320 was a sufficient measurement. In 2019 Carroll and a group of researchers questioned the scientific integrity of the new findings.

“The last iteration of the recovery group was dominated by the state game agencies,” Carroll said. “So it's not surprising to me that they ended up with a lower number.”

Both Carroll and Miller said they expect the federal government’s  sharp pivot was partially due to a pacifying attempt to appeal to the deer-hunter rancher community, which has been vocal against the reintroduction of the wolves.

Ginger Cheney is a rancher along the Arizona-New Mexico border in Blue, Arizona, with 300 heads of cattle between her two ranches. She said this past year she had at least 16 cows killed by Mexican gray wolves. 

Cheney wasn’t concerned that the federal government's possible premature status revision would put the wolf population at risk, because she said she did not believe the official count of 319 Mexican gray wolves was correct. She said she believes the count is much higher and a portion of wolves were miscounted. 

“There's a lot of uncollared wolves out there, in unknown packs,” Cheney said. “I don't think that they need to worry that we haven't hit the 320 because we have.”

She said lethal measures are the most effective ways of securing her cattle’s safety.

In his executive order, Trump suggested that the Department of the Interior consider allowing lethal removal of Mexican gray wolves to assist ranchers in combating livestock predation. 

“Illegal killing remains their greatest threat,” Miller said. “The president's suggestion that, you know, people can shoot them now is blatantly wrong, and it demonstrates a disturbing disregard for both science and the law.”

Conservationists continue to fight for the protection of the animals.

“It doesn't take much for one bad year and it can dip again,” said Hollie Colahan, the executive director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. “Just want to see that it's at that level and then see that it can maintain that level.” 

Colahan said if the wolf species is removed from the Endangered Species list now, it is likely the population will decline. 

“That 320 over four years was a decision that was based on science,” Colahan said. “It was based on the biology of the wolves and the population.”

According to the FWS’ 2017 recovery plan, the eight year period to remove the wolves from the Endangered Species list is approximately two wolf generations, providing assurance that reproduction and mortality rates are “performing such that recovered status is likely to be maintained after delisting.” 

“We consider a resilient population to be one that is able to maintain at least a 90% likelihood of persistence over a 100-year period,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said in the recovery plan. 

Colahan said averaging the population over a longer period of time is also important in case one measured year is a “fluke,” inaccurately representing the long-term population size. 

Colahan said removing the wolves from the list is counterproductive, because the species’ population will presumably drop to endangerment level again, resulting in another extensive process to get them back under endangered status. 

“What we want to do is get them up to the level that we feel they're self-sustaining, so they don't need to be on there anymore, and don't have to come back on the list at some future point,” Colahan said. 

If the wolves are removed from the list completely, they will lose all federal protections and funding for reintroduction programs. The wolves’ protections will then be the responsibility of each state.

Jim Devos, Mexican wolf coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, said the department does not comment on executive orders, but does manage the wolf population along with state and federal partners.

Colahan said she remains concerned the state may follow the federal government’s lead, upsetting the ecosystem. “Wolves being at the top there, those apex predators are really important in keeping things in balance.”

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.