An urgent plea was just sent to a colleague from the National Resources Defense Council:
Tell the Bush Administration to Protect Gray Wolves!
We must stop the Bush Administration’s plan to declare open season on the wolves of Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho. If this plan is approved, Wyoming and Idaho intend to begin exterminating hundreds of gray wolves — by aerial gunning and other cruel methods — while they’re still on the endangered species list.
Link.
The signatures on earlier NRDC petitions helped to delay the hunt. Now, the Bush Administration had moved to release the hunters by changing the wolves’ ratio to the surrounding animal populations as a way to bypass their endangered species designation.
More below the jump…
The colleague who sent me this posted a warning last January with the reasons behind the Bush Admin’s decision. The NRDC petitions delayed the outcome at that time. Now the Bush Administration has moved the goal posts and has changed the rules of the (big) game (hunt) by reducing the numbers needed on the opposing team .
Here’s an excerpt from NRDC petition letter:
I strongly oppose your proposal to give states a license to kill wolves in areas where big game populations are below targeted levels. This change to the 10(j) rule could lead to the killing of hundreds of wolves, reversing the welcome gains in recovery of this magnificent species in the Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho regions.
I am especially outraged that your proposal would empower states to begin killing wolves before they are taken off the Endangered Species list. Clearly, such killing will impact the wolf population. Yet, your Environmental Assessment fails to make the case that mass killing will not set back wolf recovery.
Full letter here
The letter is pre-set up. All you have to do is add your email and contact info. The NRDC website has made it easy. Here’s the link to the NRDC page. They need signatures asap.
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at how the bush admin keeps finding ways to go lower on the humanity meter. Aerial hunts of endangered species as got to qualify as deeply low. Please sign the petition.
rat bastids.
cross-post this everywhere you can. It’s important!
is astounding. He just likes to kill things!
I posted one last year about this at dKos & MLW, I thought we had voted it down.
Bush is like Herpes, reappearing and tainting everything again and again and again.
Excuse me one and all–WARNING–major rant coming on.
These goddamn psychopathic mutherfuckers must be stopped. I’ve never owned or handled, much less fired a gun, but right now I’d like to be invited along on Dick’s next “hunting” party, and I’d also like to pay a visit to TwiddleDum’s “ranch” and clear me some b(r)ush. A face (or an ass) full of buckshot is all these preening chickenhawks understand. Not enough to needlessly torture and kill people, eh? What the fuck do wolves have to do with blood for oil?? What money can be made, what sick Rethug purpose can be served by eliminating a species? It’s way past time for ACTION.
Hopefully I’ve couched this in terms that won’t endanger the site in any way.
I’ll be signing and forwarding the petition to my circle, including a kindred spirit who resides in Idaho. And I’ll be asking him what the fuck is wrong with the people in his state who might actually carry this out.
I’m sick to my stomach—more than usual.
Wolves are so vicious. Especially when they want a scritch behind their ear.
I have rescued and been blessed with 6 of them so far. They are family.
I’m with nightingale.
at least one “hunter” will be killed by another “hunter”.
I fought this last year and will fight again this year, thanks for letting us know.
Get the gummnt OUT of the picture. Let local communities deal with it.
First of all I have to tell you that this is a highly emotionally charged subject for me because I was born/raised in Park County, Montana, right next to the Park, and I know ranchers who have had to deal with the problem, and the guides, and some of the assinine beaurocrats who made a killing on the wolf relocation program, one of whom is a relative of mine.
People don’t understand that Yellowstone Park is NOT big enough to support the herds it has. It is surrounded by all kinds of highways, towns, ranches, and above all bazillions of subdivisions that are going to put the long-ranging wolf on a collision course with humanity as it did with the buffalo. Remember that? How they annually have to shoot the buffalo that range out of the Park? Read Allston Chase, on “playing God in Yellowstone” about mismanagement of fire policy, wildlife policy, tourism policy etc. and what a national snafu the whole place is?
One endangered species endangers another: personal (not corporate) agriculture. About 1.5% of the nation are any longer involved in any kind of agriculture, period, and this is insane. But you can not have it both ways: wolves easily range 50 miles a day, their nature, sorry, is “playful” sport killing – two or three wolves can kill dozens of sheep in a night or two, and so many people I know watched it happen.
Either their has to be some hideous federal relocation/liquidation program of the ranchers in the periphery of Yellowstone or you have to admit the folly of reintroducing the gray wolf into that relatively populated region.
BTW the US public imagination drops dead at the national border, they forget about Alberta which teems with grey wolves. That’s where the US government bought many of the wolves at about a million apiece, where ironically Canada was paying a bounty on them for their plentitude. Sure they’re “endangered” in highly populated areas but not to the north of the US. There is also a band of them on the Boulder River watershed which was doing fine long before the Yellowstone Park dog/pony show about wolves.
Do you like the government shoving policy down your throat? Showing up taking control of lands/resources? But that is just what happened to the ranchers surrounding Yellowstone.
I think of the Weber family who have been in Paradise Valley about 30 miles north of Yellowstone for nearly 150 years raising sheep. They were not allowed to protect their herds. Like people of better animal husbandry skills, they knew each animal individually, did their best to corral them, but when the wolves came the gummnt told them they would be imprisoned if they took a shot at any. Night after night two, three, nine animals were slain. Supposedly it was enough that they were paid for the livestock, but it was terrorism in their sight, those who bred, tended and loved their herd. Finally the gummnt came in and “officially” shot the THREE wolves who did all the killing.
People kid themselves, that wolves do not sport hunt. Now the guides, the outdoorsmen, everybody surrounding Yellowstone all see: the herds are radically diminishing. The elk in particular are dying off because the young are dying from sport killing.
WHY WHY WHY, of all places to reintroduce the wolf, did they pick a place where they are also dedicated to protecting herds of vanishing wildlife?
End of story is that as big as it looks to urban people of the US, Yellowstone’s periphery is very limited as to the needs of wildlife and wolves to roam. IT IS AN OUTSIZE ZOO. It is not sufficient to keep a natural balance. The reintroduction of the wolf in Yellowstone was signing an eventual death warrant either to the wolves or to the herds… and also to all ranching surrounding the area.
I say tell the gummnt hands off, all right. Let the people do what they must do to protect their herds. If the gummnt would get its sorry arse out of the picture all would benefit.
…along the Rio Grande in Texas, down around Brownsville, very soon now.
Ah well, relevant song, after a fashion: