Online Messenger #236
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Western Watersheds Project is proud to be challenging the illegal delisting of wolves in Wyoming to stop the government-sanctioned slaughter of these top predators. This litigation was filed in Federal District Court in Denver on November 27, 2012.
As soon as the ink was dry on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s delisting rule in September 2012, Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department initiated a wolf hunt which allows hunters and trappers to kill up to 52 wolves within the so-called “trophy zone” and allows anyone to kill an unlimited number of wolves, by any method, throughout the remaining 80% of the state.
To date, at least 54 of the state’s 330 wolves, including up to 10 wolves from some of Yellowstone National Park’s most famous wolf packs, have been killed. These wolves have been killed without regard to pack structure, the ecological role of wolves, or the fact that millions of Americans want wolves on the landscape.
The USFWS delisting rule also stops, dead in its tracks, wolf recovery in neighboring states such as Colorado and Utah.
Opposition to wolves comes largely from the public lands ranchers who do not want to see predators restored on America’s public lands. With the new wolf plan and the kill-at-will policies in place in Wyoming, it has been looking more and more like they might get their way.
Western Watersheds Project will fight for wolves until they are present in healthy numbers in all suitable habitats across the American West, from the northern Rockies to the forests of the southwest.
Our thanks to Jay Tutchton, WildEarth Guardians’ General Counsel, who is representing the eight-group coalition including Western Watersheds Project in this litigation.
