Kaoru, Wolf Weekly Wrap Up, The Safari Club International, the NRA, Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act of 2017, Our Newest Court Fight

Kaoru was husky. She was a therapy dog who helped autistic children and other kids with emotional needs get through the day. She provided joy to her owner, Valley Calderoni, who works at an animal rehabilitation center.
Now, thanks to a careless hunter and lax enforcement, Kaoru is dead. We owe her justice.

Kaoru and her mom were out hiking with some of Calderoni's colleagues and some animals from the rehab center. They were near a No Hunting & No Shooting Zone, but the trail they were on wasn't explicitly protected. Nevertheless they weren't worried: it was only mule deer and black bear season. None of the pups they were with could be mistaken for an animal that could be legally shot. 

But that's the real problem. The hunter who shot and killed Kaoru said he thought she was a wolf and that's why he fired — even though it's also illegal to hunt wolves. This means that not only do we have a dead, innocent dog, we also have a man whose best excuse is that he thought he was shooting an off-limits animal. Despite all this, no charges have been filed. 

This is about more than Kaoru. These sad and bizarre facts show that the laws on the books designed to protect animals just don't work. They don't discourage hunters from being cautious instead of rash, and the consequences are deadly. What we really need is more space along hiking trails where is hunting is prohibited.

In Kaoru's honor, join us and demand the No Hunting & No Shooting zone be extended to include where she was killed.


The Safari Club International and the NRA are promoting a frightening and radical set of provisions in the U.S. House of Representatives that amount to an all-out attack on wildlife in the United States. If passed, their so-called Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act of 2017 will open the door to extreme killing of wolves and grizzly bears, the opening of National Park Service lands to trophy hunting, the poisoning of dozens of species with spent lead ammunition and tackle, the import of polar bear trophies from Canada, and so much more.
Among the most egregious of this bill’s extremist hunting proposals are:
Taking away Endangered Species Act protection from wolves in Wyoming and the western Great Lakes region, and barring judicial review of these actions;
Allowing unusually cruel and unsporting hunting methods—such as killing black bear mothers and cubs while they’re hibernating—on National Park Service lands in Alaska;
Opening up millions of acres of federal public lands to the use of steel-jawed leghold traps and other body-gripping traps, which inherently cruel and indiscriminate; and
They even want to allow the use silencers on weapons for hunting—an invitation for poachers to invade our federal lands.
We must defeat the SHARE Act. Please make a brief, polite phone call to Rep. Donald Norcross at (202) 225-6501 . You can simply say, "I'm a constituent, and I urge you to oppose the SHARE Act, H.R. 3668. This bill will undermine critical protections for wolves and allow extreme and inhumane hunting methods on National Park Service lands in Alaska."

Our Newest Court Fight: Halting Wolf-killing in Washington
We're heading back to court, this time to save wolves in Washington state. On Monday the Center for Biological Diversity and partners filed a lawsuit to stop the state from killing even more wolves after members of the Smackout and Sherman packs were gunned down.

"We can't sit by and watch wildlife officials kill more wolves from Washington's small wolf population," said Amaroq Weiss, our West Coast wolf advocate. "Washingtonians want wolves recovered, not killed. The Department of Fish and Wildlife needs to listen to public opinion and consider the dire environmental costs of killing more wolves."

Washington's wolves were driven to extinction in the early 1900s via government-sponsored extermination; they began to recolonize the state very recently, growing into a fledgling population of about 20 confirmed packs by 2017.

Read more in The Seattle Times.