The Endangered Species Act and Limitations on Tribal Sovereignty

Abstract

In 1995, Idaho’s Nez Perce Tribe became the first and thus far only tribe in the United States to assume responsibility for managing the statewide recovery of an endangered species. The Tribe’s role in the successful reintroduction and recovery of once-endangered gray wolves in the northern Rockies tested principles central to federal-tribal-state relationships and the application of the Endangered Species Act on reservations and lands ceded via treaty to the federal government. A cooperative arrangement with the federal government seemed poised to bolster tribal rights in relation to species recovery programs. Instead, frustration at the increasing marginalization and denial of a genuine co-management role with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service became more pronounced once wolves were delisted and the State of Idaho assumed primary responsibility for management of the species. Drawing on legal scholarship and policy studies focused on the nexus between environmental statutes and Native American sovereignty, federal and tribal agency reports, and journalists’ accounts of wolf reintroduction and recovery in Idaho, this article focuses on the recent history of Nez Perce involvement in gray wolf management. Their experiences demonstrated how a small but proactive and determined tribe could succeed beyond expectations in recovering as charismatic and controversial a species as gray wolves. Unfortunately, the experience also showed the limitations of tribal sovereignty in a federalized system that leaves tribal nations subordinated to better-resourced and more powerful national and state collaborators.