Alyssa Grayson: "May 5th is a sober anniversary…"

As some of you may know, May 5th is the anniversary of Northern Rockies wolves being de-listed in 2011. They are the first wild animals to be de-listed by Congress via a sneaky budget bill rider. It was Senator Jon Tester (MT) and Rep. Mike Simpson (ID) that put the rider in a bill that was passed by Congress.

Now, the wolves are in danger of being de-listed from the rest of the lower 48 states. Senators Cynthia Lummis and Orrin Hatch wrote a letter to Director Dan Ashe asked him to de-list the wolves.   Among some of the things they said were, “wolves do not merit federal protections” and  “unmanaged wolves are devastating to livestock and indigenous wildlife.”

Many, if not all, of these statements are false, especially the last one. Wolves account for less than 1% of ALL livestock loss – domestic dogs and other wild predators account for even more.

Wolves are just starting to return; their populations are not stable – not enough to sustain biodiversity. OR-7 traveled over 2,000 miles in search of a mate, only to travel back to Oregon again.  He went back because, despite the distance he traveled, his searches were unsuccessful.  In those 2,000 miles, he never attacked, killed, or threatened livestock, and stayed far away from humans.  Recently, OR-5, OR-7’s sister, was trapped and killed just because she stepped over the border and into Idaho.  Wolves don’t know human boundaries. They don’t know where they are protected and where they are not.

 Wolves are being harshly ‘managed’ in the states they are not protected. One state wants to use skinned wolves to lure other wolves and kill them! This is unacceptable. We cannot let this happen to our wildlife. We have to protect it, before it’s too late.

If you would like to help preserve these animals, you can contact USFWS Director Dan Ashe and ask him to keep the wolves on the Endangered Species List.  Also, please contact your Senators and Representatives – tell them about this important issue.   

We need as many people as we can get to speak up for the wolves. Decades ago, there were over 200,000 wolves all across the U.S.   A few clusters of about a thousand wolves in only a couple of states are definitely not a sustainable population….