Court Opinion

ID: 9491133
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:04:39.559446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:32.004298
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur. I write separately only to emphasize that I find recourse to legislative history and arguments from statutory “purpose,” see Maj. Op. 3956-61, unnecessary to the resolution of this appeal.
McKittrick’s contention that the Fish and Wildlife Service was not authorized to create an experimental population from an “unlisted” population (ie., Canadian gray wolves) is, in my view, answered by the plain language of the Endangered Species Act:
The Secretary may authorize the release ... of any population ... of an endangered species or a threatened species outside the current range of such species if the Secretary determines that such release will further the conservation of such species.
16 U.S.C. § 1539(j)(2)(A) (emphasis added). Boiled down to its essence, the statute provides that the Secretary may, upon making certain findings, authorize the release of “any population” of an “endangered species” or a “threatened species.” The gray wolf is endangered and threatened as a species, even if the sub species that roams Canada is not. The statutory language refers to species, not subspecies. Consequently, in the end, the interpretive calculus is straightforward. Is the gray wolf an endangered or threatened species? Yes. Did the Secretary release “any population” of that species? Yes. Was the Secretary’s action authorized by the plain language of § 1539(j)(2)(A)? It would certainly appear so.
Text alone also suffices, in my mind, to resolve MeKittrick’s claim that the Yellowstone designation violated § 1539(j)(l). That statute authorizes the release of experimental populations “only when, and at such times as, the population is wholly separate geographically from nonexperimental populations of the same species.” Pointing to isolated past sightings of a few stray wolves in the Yellowstone area, McKittrick claims that the released experimental population at issue here was not sufficiently “separate geographically” from existing wolves under § 1539(j)(l). The statute, however, requires only that newly introduced experimental populations be separate geographically “from nonexperimental populations of the same species.” 16 U.S.C. § 1539(j)(l) (emphasis added). And although the term “populations” is not specifically defined in the statute, its ordinary meaning undoubtedly denotes a group of more than one animal. See, e.g., Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1766 (1986) (defining “population” as “the organisms inhabiting a particular area or biotype”). A single straggler does not a population make.