Urgent – Gray wolves Need Your Help!
At the start of 2022, most gray wolves across the lower 48 states were void of federal protection, save for a small Mexican gray wolf population in Arizona and New Mexico.
But that changed in February when a federal judge struck down a Trump-era delisting rule to restore Endangered Species Act protections to thousands of wolves. While this was a massive victory in protecting wolves, the decision reinstated federal protections in only 44 of the 48 contiguous states.
The ruling didn’t apply to Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, where the war on wolves is ongoing and being waged most intensely. Especially since 2021, when emboldened politicians in Montana and Idaho passed a slew of controversial laws and regulations. All of which were actively aimed at decreasing the wolf population with longer hunting seasons, higher limits, and year-round trapping seasons.
They legalized snaring, hunting wolves at night on private land, killing newborn pups and nursing mothers, reimbursement payments for killing wolves, and even using snowmobiles and ATVs to chase down wolves to kill them. In Montana alone, hunters responded during the 2021-2022 season by killing 273 wolves, including Yellowstone wolves, considered the “most-viewed” wolves worldwide.
Montana and Idaho’s newly enacted policies were not going unnoticed by wildlife advocates nationwide, and after two petitions were filed to list these wolves, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded. In September 2021, the federal agency acknowledged these wolves’ grave challenges and initiated a 12-month status review of wolves in the western United States, stating that “a listing action may be warranted.”
Although it’s been over a year, USFWS has maintained radio silence. Wildlife advocates have continued to fight tirelessly, with some measures of success, but the fight is still ongoing, and there’s a clear path for you to help that fight.
Join us in calling for the Biden administration to enact an emergency listing of wolves in the Northern Rockies.
In a world where we increasingly understand the importance of predators and our ability to coexist, the Biden administration mustn’t continue to turn a blind eye to what is happening in states bent on delegitimizing science and killing wolves.
Wolf recovery requires us to develop a healthy relationship with wolves and each other. We must recognize the ecological importance of wolves, advance non-lethal measures to help foster coexistence with them, and refrain from unjustified persecution.
Urge the Biden administration to immediately issue emergency relisting protections for wolves in the western United States.
Recipients
- President Joseph ‘Joe’ R. Biden
- Secretary Deb Haaland
- Director Martha Williams
Message
Please immediately enact an emergency listing of wolves in the western U.S.
Dear [Decision Maker],
As a lifelong supporter of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and someone who cares deeply for our nation’s wolves and wildlife, I am writing to urge the Department of the Interior to enact an emergency listing of wolves in the western United States.
Wolves are a critical keystone species, and the extirpation of wolves and large carnivores from large portions of the landscape is a global phenomenon with broad ecological consequences. A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that top predators play critical roles in maintaining a diversity of other wildlife species and, as such, the composition, function, and resilience of ecosystems.
Yet wolves in the Northern Rockies have faced brutal attacks from increasingly extreme and controversial hunting legislation in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
Wyoming allows a virtually unrestricted hunt. Montana has authorized hunters to slaughter up to 85% of its wolves and even permits baiting, trapping, and hunting on the border of Yellowstone National Park. And in Idaho, where the state is offering a bounty of up to $2,500 for each wolf killed, hunters may slaughter up to 90% of the state’s wolf population using unethical hunting practices such as snaring and even using snowmobiles and ATVs to chase down wolves to kill them.
These extreme hunts have been highly controversial and particularly detrimental to wolves residing in Yellowstone National Park. The 2021 decision to eliminate quotas in areas surrounding Yellowstone brought a sizeable increase in the death toll of Yellowstone’s wolves. Hunters killed at least 25 park wolves during the 2021-2022 season, including several members of the “most-viewed” wolf pack in the world.
The Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Obama has called on the Biden administration for an emergency listing. He stated in an Op-Ed that “what is happening in Idaho and Montana is not hunting. It is pure, unbridled cruelty,” and called out their extreme wolf management policies as “ecocide.”
It’s past time to bring our wildlife policies into the 21st century.
Wolf recovery requires us to develop a healthy relationship with wolves and each other. We must recognize the ecological importance of wolves, advance non-lethal measures to help foster coexistence with them, and refrain from unjustified persecution.
The Department of the Interior has the authority to enact an emergency relisting. I urge you to immediately issue an emergency regulation to restore federal protections through the Endangered Species Act to the Northern Rocky Mountain DPS of the gray wolf.
In a world where we increasingly understand the importance of predators and our ability to coexist, you mustn’t continue to turn a blind eye to what is happening in states bent on delegitimizing science and killing wolves.
I’m counting on you to enact an emergency relisting immediately.
Please Sign Petition
https://engage.nywolf.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=175
"OUR WORLD" 