Next vote: November 9 · Goal: $600

They’re gutting the Endangered Species Act, piece by piece.

The Endangered Species Act brought back the bald eagle. It brought back the gray wolf. It is the only reason wolves are alive in Wisconsin today.

Right now it’s being taken apart. Not all at once. One rule, one bill, one executive order at a time. Here’s the list.

🚨 Already done

“Harm” no longer means habitat. The administration narrowed what it means to “harm” an endangered animal. Drilling, mining, logging and development can now move into critical habitat, as long as no one directly kills the animal. Destroy the den, the forest, the wetland? Allowed.

An order to delist wolves. On September 4, President Trump gave the Interior Department 90 days to act on stripping gray wolves of protection. That clock runs out in early December.

The House already voted. In December 2025, the House passed a bill to delist gray wolves across the Lower 48 and bar anyone from challenging it in court. It’s waiting in the Senate.

⚠️ Coming next

The permitting bill. Vote: November 9. It’s called the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act,” and it’s sold as cutting red tape. Inside:

• The science gets a stopwatch. Endangered species reviews must wrap up when the project paperwork does, not when the biologists are done.
• States take over. Qualified states can take over federal endangered species reviews. In Wisconsin, that’s the agency whose wolf hunt rules are already written and waiting.
• State data drives delisting. Federal agencies would be directed to use state-collected data to decide whether a species stays protected.
• The courthouse door starts closing. Just 150 days to challenge a federal wildlife decision in court. Miss it and it stands forever. Tribal nations lose ground too.

Threatened species lose automatic protection. A proposed rule would end the “blanket rule” that gives threatened species the same protections as endangered ones. Each species would need its own rule, and many would get none.

Habitat gets a price tag. Another proposal would require officials to weigh economic impacts before deciding a species’ habitat is critical to its survival.

Our own senator. Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin and Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar introduced S. 5519, which orders Fish and Wildlife to issue a rule delisting wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Wisconsin’s own list. The DNR is rewriting the state endangered species list, and its own paperwork says more species will come off than go on.

In 2021, our lawsuit stopped Wisconsin’s second wolf hunt. Every item on this list is built to make sure nobody can win a fight like that again.

Here’s how we fight back before November 9

Senators ignore form emails. They don’t ignore their state’s businesses.

We’re putting at least 100 letters from Wisconsin businesses on our senators’ desks before the vote, telling them to protect the Endangered Species Act. You don’t write anything. We do the work. Your gift gets the letters there. Our goal is $600.

$25funds 5 letters

$50funds 10 letters

$100funds 20 letters

We’re 100% volunteer. We take $0 from corporations or government. When the powerful rewrite the rules, we’re funded by the only people who can’t be bought: you.

For the wolves,

Melissa Smith
Executive Director and Founder
Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance
Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf & Wildlife
msmith@wiwolvesandwildlife.org · (608) 234-8860