Key facts:
- In 2025, the state gray wolf population increase 17 percent.
- There are 270 known wolves in 23 breeding pairs and 49 packs in Washington state.
- There are no known wolves in Western Washington.
In 2024, the Center for Biological Diversity characterized the 9 percent drop in the state’s total gray wolf population as “infuriating,” “dramatic,” and “disturbing.”
Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists noted they believed the dip in overall population was likely an anomaly. The 2025 population report seems to have borne out what the state’s biologists believed. Despite a 9 percent decrease in 2024 and 28 mortalities in 2025, the state’s overall wolf population increased by 17 percent last year.
The new population numbers for our state show at least 270 gray wolves in 23 breeding pairs and 49 packs. Notably, there are still no wolves established in “Southern Cascades/Northwest Coast Recovery Region” which is better described as the portions of the state west of the Cascade Mountains and on the peninsula.
However, this significant population rebound is still not good enough for the Center for Biological Diversity (CFBD). In a recent news story, Amaroq Weiss, from the activist group is quoted as saying, “Regaining lost footing is essential but these numbers don’t mean wolves are recovered in Washington.”
The 2024 press state issued by the Center for Biological Diversity, Amaroq Weiss is quoted as saying, “Don’t let anyone sell you on the idea that wolves in Washington are on a fast-track to recovery.”
With one exception, the numbers list in the population report, actually do mean gray wolves have recovered in Washington state. Under the recovery guidelines for our state, gray wolves are considered a recovered species when the following criteria are met: “15 successful breeding pairs distributed in three geographic regions for three consecutive years” or “18 successful breeding pairs are present, with 4 successful breeding pairs in the Eastern Washington region, 4 successful breeding pairs in the Northern Cascades region, 4 successful breeding pairs distributed in the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast region, and 6 anywhere in the state.” Additionally, the recovery plan notes, that “persistence modeling suggested … 15 successful breeding pairs was an adequate recovery objective for delisting.”
The only exception to full recovery of gray wolves in Washington state is regional distribution of the predators into western Washington. A problem CFBD blames on “human activity.”
What CFBD fails to offer is a solution to natural distribution of gray wolves, as required in the recovery plan, choosing, instead to offer an additional warning: “The bottom line is that for Washington’s wolf population to fully recover, the department must focus on reducing human-caused wolf deaths,” Weiss said.
“The sky is falling, just wait and see,” is not sound public policy method.
There have been repeated calls in recent years to downlist or delist gray wolves in Washington state. The new population report is another piece of evidence in support of this proposed policy change.
Since 2007, the gray wolf population in our state has increased an average of 20 percent year-over-year until the 2024 population anomaly. That average factors in wolves removed for depredation on livestock, those killed by other animals, and wolves that died of natural causes. It also includes illegal instances of poaching and “human activity.”
Washington state’s gray wolf recovery policy was developed in 2011 and has never been updated. Now is the ideal time for the Fish and Wildlife Commission to enact the change it failed to approve in 2024, when agency biologists recommended downlisting the predators from “endangered” to “sensitive.”
The change in protection status is minimal in terms of overall conservation practices, penalties, and protections but allows for broader discussion of how wolves can be managed under state law. The benefit of that downlisting would be directly felt by the people in the “Eastern Washington Recovery Region,” or the region where approximately 70 percent of the state’s wolf population resides.
Gray wolves in our state have proven to be a resilient species that does not need to be coddled. The most recent population report shows that, even in the face of a population decline, double-digit recovery is not only possible but probable. Now is the time to acknowledge that our gray wolf population is not going to decline but has been, and is, flourishing and needs proper management for the betterment of itself and the prey it survives upon.
