Attitudes toward the continued protection of gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act

In February 2024, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced their intention to develop – for the first time – a National Recovery Plan under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for gray wolves in the lower 48 states.

In August 2025, a federal judge vacated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) decision denying ESA protections for gray wolves in the Western U.S. The judge found the FWS failed to consider the best available science, the species’ historical range, and how wolves would be affected by state management, which includes aggressive harvesting.

Those events represent key context for this report, which describes the results of a web-based survey implemented in July and August of 2025 and designed to assess the attitudes of residents of the contiguous United States, as they pertain to the appropriateness of continuing protection of gray wolves under the ESA. A large body of prior research indicates that individuals’ attitudes toward species protections can be affected by a variety of factors. As such, a key feature of this survey was understanding how attitudes about continued protections are affected by different kinds of information about wolves and their protection.