Litigating Predator Management

Despite significant gains over the last half-century, predators such as mountain lions, wolves, and bears are in the crosshairs once again. Scientific management, democratic principles, and the holding of wildlife resources in trust for the public are all foundational pillars of the North American Model for Wildlife Conservation, yet state wildlife agencies and legislatures routinely fail to uphold these values where predators are concerned. Many of these tensions were thrust into the public consciousness in 2020 when gray wolves were temporarily delisted under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), resulting in a disastrous wolf hunting season in Wisconsin. States that have managed mountain lion and wolf populations for years are now stripping protections, significantly increasing hunting quotas, and legalizing long-forbidden hunting methods. The growing tensions over predator management have spilled into courtrooms across the nation, with animal rights and environmental advocacy groups actively litigating predator hunting in many states. This Article examines past and present legal challenges that aim to overturn state predator management schemes. After building a database of predator hunting litigation cases, I taxonomized them into distinct categories: federal claims based on the ESA, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), or public lands statutes; state informational challenges; state procedural claims; substantive challenges based on state law; animal welfare laws; tribal reserved treaty rights; and the public trust doctrine. Notably, this research indicates that few challenges have been successful. The confluence between the nature of litigating against a state government and the structure of American wildlife law makes winning incredibly difficult. State wildlife agencies have vast authority under exceedingly broad legislative delegations, and agencies are given significant deference on wildlife science issues despite routinely relying on fallacious logic and a paucity of data. Further, hunting is privileged over other values and management tools. Suggestions to improve state predator management include the use of experimental regulations to improve scientific data, changes to the structure of wildlife governance, and revamping the public trust doctrine for wildlife.