"BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal judge has given U.S. wildlife officials 18 months to decide if wolverines should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, following years of dispute over how much risk climate change and other threats pose to the rare and elusive predators.

The order from U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy comes after environmentalists challenged a 2020 decision under the Trump administration to withhold protections for the animals in the lower 48 states, where no more than 300 of the animals are thought to remain.

Environmentalists argued that wolverines face localized extinction as a result of climate change, habitat fragmentation and low genetic diversity. Warming temperatures are expected to diminish the mountain snowpack that wolverines rely on to dig dens to birth and raise their young.

The Fish and Wildlife Service received a petition to protect wolverines in 2000 and first proposed protections in 2010. It later sought to withdraw that proposal, but was blocked by a federal judge who said the snow-dependent animals were “squarely in the path of climate change.”"

Matthew Brown reports for the Associated Press May 27, 2022. [2]