Congress added thisВ section (Section 10(j)) to the ESA in order to lessen anger against reintroduction efforts. These special rules can allow for such things as killing or wounding wolves, which would not be allowed if the species was designated as endangered. Experimental populations are treated as a threatened species, which means that special rules may be made for the population. The reintroduced populations are then called experimental populations. In 1982 Congress changed the Endangered Species ActВ to addВ a section that allows the Fisheries and Wildlife Service to take animals from where they live and move them to a new location in the hopes that they will reproduce there.

Within the last ten years, with the help of the strict rules and successful reintroduction efforts, wolf numbers have greatly increased within the United States. The ESA requires the Federal government to help endangered and threatened species (those species that will likely face extinction if no action is taken to help them) recover from their low numbers.Д«y 1978 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had listed the gray wolf as endangered throughout the lower 48 states of the United States, except in Minnesota, where the wolf was listed as threatened. Things began to get better for the gray wolf beginning in 1973 when Congress passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Because humans who settled the United States brought with them an intense hatred and fear of wolves, and because wolves can upset farmers by eating their livestock, human activity such as poisoning, trapping, and shooting wolves led to the almost complete extinction of the wolf in the United States. They used to live in most of the lower 48 states of the United States, but, by the early 1900s, the gray wolf had almost entirely disappeared from the lower 48 states. Like humans, gray wolves are amazingly adaptable and can live in many different climates and conditions. It lives throughout North America and consumes a varied diet of mid-sized animals such as deer. The gray wolf is a member of the canine family. Thanks to the help of the Endangered Species Act the gray wolf is well on its way to recovery. The gray wolf was almost extinct in the lower 48 states of the United States in the middle of the 1900s.

The wolves summary