On September 4, 2026, Trump signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to make a final determination on the gray wolf's listing status under the Endangered Species Act, to consider removing protections from gray wolves and Mexican gray wolves, and to send Congress legislative recommendations for doing so. The Center for Biological Diversity reports the order also encourages federal agencies to press states to drop their own wolf protections.
Reporting on the order framed it as aimed at the cattle industry: making it easier for ranchers to kill wolves that threaten livestock, as part of a broader push on beef prices.
The scale is worth stating, because the two animals are not in the same position. Roughly 317 Mexican gray wolves remain in the wild.
The case for the order is real and should be given straight. Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian legal group, supports it on the ground that the government's own scientists previously found western gray wolves no longer meet the Act's definition of threatened or endangered, and that continuing to regulate anyway is federal control that the statute does not authorize. Mark Miller of PLF put it this way: “The ESA doesn't give the federal government a license to keep that finding in a drawer while it continues to bind the hands of ranchers.” His colleague Joe Luppino-Esposito added that “once a species no longer meets the Act's definition of threatened or endangered, the federal government steps out of the picture.” Ranchers who lose livestock to wolves are describing a real problem, not an invented one.
Conservation groups read the same order differently. The Center for Biological Diversity called it a political stunt that ignores the science. Regan Downey of the Wolf Conservation Center said, “Mexican wolves aren't the problem, but the administration's approach to solving purported conflict is.” Leia Barnett of WildEarth Guardians said, “Once again we see this administration attempting to override the checks and balances provided by bedrock environmental laws.”
What the order does not do is delist anything. It directs a determination and a set of recommendations. Whether protections actually come off depends on what Interior finds and what Congress does with it (see Interior Helped Write Mike Lee's Public Lands Sell-Off Pitch. Then Burgum Said Land Sales Were Not 'Part of the President's Agenda' and Trump Says He Will Let Ranchers 'Process Their Own Food.' The Cattle Industry Answered That 'Food Safety Is NOT Red Tape').