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On its website, the U.S. Forest Service , 鈥淭hese are special places where nature still calls the shots.鈥�

But a new federal lawsuit alleges that when it comes to predators on protected public lands, the government is deferring more to ranchers than Mother Nature.

Conservation groups are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management over the killing of predator animals by federal employees in designated wilderness areas, arguing the practice violates a law preserving 鈥渦ntrammeled鈥� natural places.

WildEarth Guardians joined the Western Watersheds Project and Wilderness Watch in filing the complaint last month in New Mexico鈥檚 U.S. District Court.

The organizations are asking a court to review 鈥減redator control鈥� actions by Wildlife Services, of the USDA鈥檚 Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, known as APHIS.

Among its activities, Wildlife Services kills predators as part of a strategy to manage wildlife and protect against livestock depredation, crop loss and property damage. A spokesperson for APHIS declined to comment on the litigation.

The plaintiffs argue that 鈥渇ederally subsidized wildlife killing鈥� has been practiced 鈥渟olely to promote the private economic interests of producers that are already afforded the heavily subsidized privilege to commercially graze livestock on federal public lands.鈥�

The legal question is whether the 1964 Wilderness Act allows Wildlife Services to kill natural predators in 803 designated wilderness areas, covering 111.7 million acres of public land nationwide. While the law allows for grazing in areas where it has taken place since before the wilderness area designation by Congress, the lawsuit argues this does not authorize the government to kill carnivores that may hunt those animals.

Yet, according to the most recent data , Wildlife Services killed 2,625 coyotes in New Mexico in 2024, trapped six Mexican gray wolves and relocated two mountain lions.

In an interview, WildEarth Guardians' senior staff attorney, Jennifer Schwartz, emphasized, 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 a challenge to anyone鈥檚 privilege to graze in wilderness. 鈥� Congress specifically provided for livestock grazing, but it did not provide for killing native wildlife on behalf of commercial grazing operations. It didn't provide for taxpayer-funded predator control. That is very antithetical to the other core purposes of the statute, in terms of keeping wilderness untrammeled, where the forces of nature prevail.鈥�

She said the agencies have reasoned that, since Congress did not forbid predator control practices in wilderness areas, they could interpret it as implicitly permitted.

Since the Supreme Court鈥檚 ruling in Chevron U.S.A v. Natural Resources Defense Council, courts have given executive branch agencies discretion to interpret ambiguities in statutes. If the agency鈥檚 interpretation was reasonable, the courts deferred to them.

That deference, nicknamed the 鈥淐hevron doctrine,鈥� fell in 2024 under a pair of decisions where the high court upheld a of the Administrative Procedure Act that says reviewing courts 鈥渟hall decide all relevant questions of law.鈥�

The fall of the Chevron doctrine opened the door to ask the court to enforce a plain reading of the statute, Schwartz said.

鈥淭his is our most strictly construed conservation law,鈥� she said. 鈥淭o perversely expand the narrow grazing exception to also include killing native wildlife, on behalf of private grazing operations, is a gross misreading of the statute.鈥�

The lawsuit has been assigned preliminarily to federal Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar in sa国际传媒官网网页入口. Further proceedings have not yet been scheduled.

Algernon 顿鈥橝尘尘补蝉蝉补 is the Journal鈥檚 southern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at adammassa@abqjournal.com.