This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, February 20th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Whenever a species recovers under the Endangered Species Act,

it's supposed to then be removed from the Endangered Species Species Act. It's supposed to then be removed from the

Endangered Species list. But for the gray wolf that's not really happening.

Jonathan Wood is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research

Center in Bozeman, Montana.

We spoke last month.

What is the status of the Grey Wolf right now

as far as the Department of the Interior is concerned.

Right now, the Grey Wolf is considered a recovered species.

It's no longer listed under the Endangered Species Act and management responsibility is up to

the states.

But that could change at any time. There's been

lawsuits filed against that change and the Biden administration has

announced that it will review the decision to delist the gray wolf. Okay so

what what does it mean that a species is recovered or has been recovered?

So that's actually one of the longest running disputes on the Endangered Species Act that Congress

didn't settle.

But most, the general argument is that to recover under the Endangered Species

Act means that you're no longer in danger of extinction and by that metric the

Grey Wolf has recovered but a lot of conservationists,

...