Mike Simpson Public Lands Environment Idaho

Mike Simpson Wrote the Bill That Delists Wolves and Yellowstone Grizzlies — and Says No Court Is Allowed to Review It

Simpson's FY27 Interior spending bill strips federal protection from gray wolves and grizzlies in four ecosystems, blocks wolverine protections, and cuts Endangered Species Act listing money by half — with judicial review barred so nobody can challenge it in court.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 11, 2026

There is a way to change a law without ever passing a bill about it. You attach a paragraph to the spending bill that funds the agency, and you attach a second paragraph saying no court may review the first one.

On May 20, 2026, the House Appropriations Committee released its Interior and Environment spending bill for the coming year. The chairman of the subcommittee that wrote it is Mike Simpson, the Republican who has represented Idaho's 2nd District since 1999. He holds the pen on the bill that funds the Interior Department, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Park Service and the EPA.

Here is some of what he put in it.

Wolves, delisted by paragraph — with the courthouse locked

Section 125 orders the reissuance of the Trump-era rule stripping gray wolves of Endangered Species Act protection nationwide, and specifies that the action "shall not be subject to judicial review." That last clause is the whole trick. Ordinarily, when the government strips a species of protection, the science behind that decision can be tested in court. Section 125 says: not this time.

The Wolf Conservation Center notes this is not a new tactic — it traces to a 2011 rider that delisted wolves in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah, the first time since the Endangered Species Act was written in 1973 that Congress removed protections for a species by legislation. An identical rider was in Simpson's previous bill, the FY26 version. It came out after public opposition. He put it back.

What makes this specifically an Idaho story is what Idaho has already done with the wolves it manages.

In 2021 the Idaho Legislature passed Senate Bill 1211, and Governor Brad Little signed it. According to Idaho Fish and Game's own summary, the law established a year-round wolf trapping season on private property, allowed unlimited purchase of wolf tags, and made any method legal for taking coyotes and foxes legal for taking wolves. In practice that means night hunting with spotlights or night vision, hunting over bait on private land, using dogs, and hunting from motorized vehicles — none of which are allowed for other big game.

To be fair about what the state says: Fish and Game Director Ed Schriever pushed back at the time on the widely reported claim that the law would cut Idaho's wolf population by 90%, saying the Commission's rules would "reduce wolf conflicts while maintaining a viable wolf population that is not subject to relisting under the federal Endangered Species Act."

Read that last clause carefully. Idaho's own wildlife director described federal relisting as the backstop — the thing that keeps state policy inside a line. Simpson's rider removes the backstop, and then says no judge may look at whether removing it was justified.

Grizzlies, in four ecosystems at once

The bill does not stop at wolves.

Section 141 requires the government to reissue its 2017 rule delisting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly population within 180 days — again with judicial review blocked.
Section 149 requires a final delisting rule for the Northern Continental Divide grizzly population, to be issued "without regard to any other provision of law."
Sections 127 and 128 prohibit spending any money to establish experimental grizzly populations in the North Cascades and the Bitterroot ecosystem.

The Bitterroot straddles the Idaho–Montana line. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem reaches into eastern Idaho — Simpson's own district. He is not writing about somebody else's mountains.

And the list keeps going. In Western Watersheds Project's section-by-section reading of the bill, Section 126 targets wolverine protections. Section 124 covers the northern long-eared bat, Section 123 the lesser prairie-chicken, Section 147 the Canada lynx, Section 146 the northern spotted owl. Section 116 is a standing prohibition on the government even writing a threatened or endangered listing for the greater sage grouse. Section 131 blocks three 2024 rules that strengthened the Endangered Species Act across the board. Section 134 freezes management of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to the Trump administration's 2020 plan.

On top of the riders, the bill slashes funding for listing threatened and endangered species by nearly half the previous year's level, and two-thirds below FY25. If you can't list a species, the protections never begin.

Mary Beth Beetham, Director of Legislative Affairs at Defenders of Wildlife, put it plainly:

"Anti-wildlife Members of Congress just can't seem to appreciate that the American people cherish our shared wildlife."

The judicial review bar is the point

Strip out the species names and one design choice runs through the whole bill: decisions get made, and then courts are told to stay out.

That is not a fringe idea in this Congress. Bruce Westerman's Endangered Species Act rewrite — which conservation groups call the "Extinction Act" — does the same thing, barring courts from reviewing decisions to strip a species of protection. His own party pulled that bill from the floor rather than vote on it on Earth Day.

Simpson doesn't need a floor vote on a standalone bill. He has a spending bill that has to pass, and a gavel that lets him decide what's in the first draft. That is a quieter way to do the same thing, and it is why appropriations riders exist.

This is the second liability shield in two years

Simpson has used this bill for exactly this kind of work before. The FY26 version of the same spending bill carried Section 453, a provision that would have shielded Bayer and other pesticide makers from cancer failure-to-warn lawsuits. Democrats spent six months getting it out.

Both riders follow the same pattern: something that would never survive as a standalone bill, tucked into must-pass funding legislation, with the courts written out.

His League of Conservation Voters score reflects it — 3% in 2025, and 10% for his career.

Idaho pays for this too

Idahoans who hunt, fish, guide, outfit and run backcountry businesses have a stake in whether the animals and the country around them are managed on evidence or by rider. Simpson has spent decades presenting himself as the delegation's conservationist, the Republican who cares about Idaho's rivers and backcountry.

The bill he wrote in May tells a different story. It delists two of the West's most contested species by fiat, blocks grizzly recovery in the Bitterroot on Idaho's own border, defunds the process for listing anything new, and forecloses the one place a citizen could challenge any of it.

We deserve better.