It's Wolf Killing Season in the West
Credit: PETER PARKS for Getty Images
Once a fixture in the Rockies, gray wolves were hunted almost to extinction in parts of the West, and eliminated entirely from Yellowstone National Park. Protection from the Endangered Species Act helped their numbers climb back up. But then Bush administration took them off the endangered species list. That means the wolf hunt is back on in Montana and Idaho.
What is it with Republicans hating wolves?
While many ranchers maintain that it's necessary to kill wolves to protect their livestock, conservation groups like Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) are campaigning to reinstate the endangered species protections.
The NRDC campaign is called "The Big Howl" and through it they are encouraging people to contact Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, demand that he withdraw the Bush-era plan, putting wolves back on the endangered species list. In addition to this political pressure, they're also taking it to court!
Based on a judge's ruling -- the same one who said the hunts could go forward in Montana and Idaho, go figure -- NRDC believes that it was illegal to take wolves off the list. They're asking that the Obama administration use science to decide which animals stay on the list, presumably instead of responding to cattle industry lobbyists.
Ah, science. What a novel, Democrat-centric idea.
Since NRDC is telling us that 70 percent of the wolf pups in Yellowstone died of disease this year, and the population declined by 27 percent, I think they can be pretty confident that science will support the ideas of protection and conservation.
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