Shooting Wolves May Impact Sightings and Tourism
It’s just common sense, but now this statement is supported by a research published this month which found wolf shooting and trapping outside national park boundaries reduce chances of tourists seeing them inside the park. That’s bad news for tourists visiting Yellowstone, 44 percent of whom cite wolves as the species they most want to see. Thankfully, this week wildlife managers rejected a proposal to triple wolf harvests near Yellowstone this year. There should be no wolf hunting allowed on lands adjacent to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks! Wolves in the Northern Rockies generate enormous economic revenue for the state and are also heavily monitored by wildlife biologists for research. Other wildlife species are managed at far greater numbers. Wolves should be managed to support their continued recovery, not in ways that accelerate their decline.
Four decades after listing, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will finally have to complete a plan to recover the Mexican gray wolf.
On April 28, 1976, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Mexican gray wolf for protection under the Endangered Species Act. The highly intelligent, social animal was once a mainstay of the American Southwest. Sadly, the decision to protect it came a little late for the lobo. The livestock industry, hunters and government agents had already all but exterminated the species in the Four Corners states. But there was still a glimmer of hope, south of the border. A few of the species remained in Mexico. So between 1977-1980, the service and its Mexican counterpart worked together to round up the last remaining wild lobos in an attempt to save the whole species.
Their efforts resulted in the capture of seven wolves. Today, all wild lobos that remain in the wild are descendants of those seven.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the listing of Mexican gray wolves. One might think that in four decades the wolf would have bounced back. But with only 97 individuals existing in the wild at the end of 2015, and fewer than 25 in Mexico, the Mexican gray wolf remains one of the most endangered mammals in North America and faces a serious risk of extinction.
The reason the wolves have struggled to survive is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to take necessary action to secure a future for the lobo. The service has time and again bowed to pressure from special interest groups and state leaders in Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico who don’t want the species reestablished within their borders. In doing so, the service has never completed a crucial and legally-required part of its duty to protect this species: It has never finalized a scientifically-sound recovery plan to serve as a blueprint for establishing a healthy, sustainable population of Mexican gray wolves in the wild.
This week, though, some good news came the lobo’s way. Earthjustice, on behalf of a coalition of conservation groups, wolf centers and a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, reached an agreement with the service to finalize a recovery plan by the end of 2017.
Without a recovery plan in place, the restoration of the wolf in the wild has been severely hamstrung. Illegal killing by poachers poses an ongoing threat to wolves and is difficult for authorities to track and prosecute. The legal removal of wolves due to conflicts with livestock has also reduced the population. But the biggest threat to the recovery of the species is its problem of inbreeding, due to the severely shallow gene pool.
The service’s Mexican gray wolf conservation efforts have also been hobbled by insufficient releases of captive wolves into the wild population, excessive removals of wild wolves, and arbitrary geographic restrictions on wolf occupancy of promising recovery habitat such as in the Grand Canyon ecoregion and in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The service in 2010 admitted that the wild Mexican gray wolf population “is not thriving” and remains “at risk of failure,” and further admitted that “failure to develop an up-to-date recovery plan results in inadequate guidance for the reintroduction and recovery effort.”
This agreement offers new hope for the lobo of southwestern lore. In its finalization of the plan, we urge the service to stay out of politics and follow the science. Give this wolf a fighting chance at survival.
Learn more about Mexican gray wolves at Earthjustice.org/lobo.
There were once as many as 50 wolves living at Isle Royale National Park. Now there are only two. For this ecosystem to continue to thrive, we need to bring new wolves to Isle Royale.
Without wolves, the island’s moose population will continue to skyrocket, consuming native plants and eventually running out of food, disrupting the natural stability of the island. It is critical to bring in new wolves to protect the national park.
After gathering extensive public input last summer, the National Park Service has narrowed down their list of management options. The agency is now asking for your input on which option will best manage the wolf and moose populations on the island.
NPCA supports Option C, which requires NPS to bring additional wolves to the park in order to maintain a population of wolves on the island. After many years of consulting scientific experts and reviewing trusted research, we believe this action will best balance the island’s delicate environment.
Take Action: Tell Isle Royale National Park Superintendent Phyllis Green and the Park Service to adopt Option C and bring new wolves to Isle Royale. Isle Royale National Park would be a very different place without wolves.
Here’s how to submit your comments to the Park Service.
Step 1: Go to https://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=71605 and carefully follow the form instructions.
Step 2: Submit your comments by copying and pasting the sample message below into the "Comments" box on the web form. Remember to personalize your comments by adding observations or stories from your experiences at the park.
Step 3: Once you have completed all of the required fields on the form, click the gray “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.
Sample Message/Comments
Dear Superintendent Green,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the management plan for Isle Royale National Park. I am encouraged to see that the Park Service has narrowed the scope of this plan to focus solely on the future of wolves at the park. With only two wolves left at Isle Royale, I’m concerned about the future of the island’s ecosystem and the visitor experience. Without wolves, the moose population will continue to increase, eating until the food sources are gone. This will have disastrous impacts on native plants and other wildlife in the park.
I support Alternative C, bringing new wolves to the island as needed to maintain their population. Introducing new wolves to the island will help keep the moose population from rapidly expanding and minimize impacts to the native vegetation.
The National Park Service should adopt and implement this management option quickly to maintain ecological balance on the island.
Thank you for considering my concerns.
Sincerely,
[your name here]
Thank you for taking the time to help protect Isle Royale's fragile environment.
It’s just common sense, but now this statement is supported by a research published this month which found wolf shooting and trapping outside national park boundaries reduce chances of tourists seeing them inside the park. That’s bad news for tourists visiting Yellowstone, 44 percent of whom cite wolves as the species they most want to see. Thankfully, this week wildlife managers rejected a proposal to triple wolf harvests near Yellowstone this year. There should be no wolf hunting allowed on lands adjacent to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks! Wolves in the Northern Rockies generate enormous economic revenue for the state and are also heavily monitored by wildlife biologists for research. Other wildlife species are managed at far greater numbers. Wolves should be managed to support their continued recovery, not in ways that accelerate their decline.
Their efforts resulted in the capture of seven wolves. Today, all wild lobos that remain in the wild are descendants of those seven.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the listing of Mexican gray wolves. One might think that in four decades the wolf would have bounced back. But with only 97 individuals existing in the wild at the end of 2015, and fewer than 25 in Mexico, the Mexican gray wolf remains one of the most endangered mammals in North America and faces a serious risk of extinction.
The reason the wolves have struggled to survive is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to take necessary action to secure a future for the lobo. The service has time and again bowed to pressure from special interest groups and state leaders in Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico who don’t want the species reestablished within their borders. In doing so, the service has never completed a crucial and legally-required part of its duty to protect this species: It has never finalized a scientifically-sound recovery plan to serve as a blueprint for establishing a healthy, sustainable population of Mexican gray wolves in the wild.
This week, though, some good news came the lobo’s way. Earthjustice, on behalf of a coalition of conservation groups, wolf centers and a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, reached an agreement with the service to finalize a recovery plan by the end of 2017.
Without a recovery plan in place, the restoration of the wolf in the wild has been severely hamstrung. Illegal killing by poachers poses an ongoing threat to wolves and is difficult for authorities to track and prosecute. The legal removal of wolves due to conflicts with livestock has also reduced the population. But the biggest threat to the recovery of the species is its problem of inbreeding, due to the severely shallow gene pool.
The service’s Mexican gray wolf conservation efforts have also been hobbled by insufficient releases of captive wolves into the wild population, excessive removals of wild wolves, and arbitrary geographic restrictions on wolf occupancy of promising recovery habitat such as in the Grand Canyon ecoregion and in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The service in 2010 admitted that the wild Mexican gray wolf population “is not thriving” and remains “at risk of failure,” and further admitted that “failure to develop an up-to-date recovery plan results in inadequate guidance for the reintroduction and recovery effort.”
This agreement offers new hope for the lobo of southwestern lore. In its finalization of the plan, we urge the service to stay out of politics and follow the science. Give this wolf a fighting chance at survival.
Learn more about Mexican gray wolves at Earthjustice.org/lobo.
There were once as many as 50 wolves living at Isle Royale National Park. Now there are only two. For this ecosystem to continue to thrive, we need to bring new wolves to Isle Royale.
Submit Your Comments to Protect Isle Royale's
Ecosystem!
(This link will direct you to the Park Service's Planning, Environment & Public Comment website.)
(This link will direct you to the Park Service's Planning, Environment & Public Comment website.)
After gathering extensive public input last summer, the National Park Service has narrowed down their list of management options. The agency is now asking for your input on which option will best manage the wolf and moose populations on the island.
NPCA supports Option C, which requires NPS to bring additional wolves to the park in order to maintain a population of wolves on the island. After many years of consulting scientific experts and reviewing trusted research, we believe this action will best balance the island’s delicate environment.
Take Action: Tell Isle Royale National Park Superintendent Phyllis Green and the Park Service to adopt Option C and bring new wolves to Isle Royale. Isle Royale National Park would be a very different place without wolves.
Here’s how to submit your comments to the Park Service.
Step 1: Go to https://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=71605 and carefully follow the form instructions.
Step 2: Submit your comments by copying and pasting the sample message below into the "Comments" box on the web form. Remember to personalize your comments by adding observations or stories from your experiences at the park.
Step 3: Once you have completed all of the required fields on the form, click the gray “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.
Sample Message/Comments
Dear Superintendent Green,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the management plan for Isle Royale National Park. I am encouraged to see that the Park Service has narrowed the scope of this plan to focus solely on the future of wolves at the park. With only two wolves left at Isle Royale, I’m concerned about the future of the island’s ecosystem and the visitor experience. Without wolves, the moose population will continue to increase, eating until the food sources are gone. This will have disastrous impacts on native plants and other wildlife in the park.
I support Alternative C, bringing new wolves to the island as needed to maintain their population. Introducing new wolves to the island will help keep the moose population from rapidly expanding and minimize impacts to the native vegetation.
The National Park Service should adopt and implement this management option quickly to maintain ecological balance on the island.
Thank you for considering my concerns.
Sincerely,
[your name here]
Thank you for taking the time to help protect Isle Royale's fragile environment.
54 wild wolves killed. Stop U.S. Fish and Wildlife from Killing the Dell Creek Wolf Pack. To conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.
This is the mission statement of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Yet, their actions this spring have conveyed an entirely different intention: USFWS has been on a wolf killing spree in western Wyoming. 10 wolves from three separate packs have been “eliminated” by aerial gunning, and, in the words of Mike Jimenez, the USFWS’ wolf coordinator, “if we could have got more, we would have taken more.”
What was these animals’ crime? Behaving like wolves. They have attacked some cattle on a local ranch, and for this, the USFWS has decided to kill all of the remaining 11 members of the Dell Creek pack. It is spring. These wolves have likely just had pups. Mowing down the remaining 11 adults will mean starvation and death of the new puppies.
The USFWS is simply acting as ranchers’ henchman in Wyoming right now. A 2014 study funded by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife found that livestock killings actually increase when area wolves are killed. But the very next year, Jimenez wrote a response saying that killing lots of wolves from aggressive packs is an effective deterrent, and this has been the policy ever since.
54 Wyoming wolves were killed in 2015, and 2016 is on track to see an even higher body count. We must stop this. We must demand that the USFWS stand up first and foremost for the protection of wild animals, and use nonlethal means to reduce wolf-livestock conflict in the case of the Dell Creek Pack.
Nonlethal techniques to deter the Dell Creek pack have not even been attempted this spring. Instead, the service resorted immediately to collaring one member of the pack, then using that “Judas” wolf to track and shoot the others from planes.
This is not the will of the public. The USFWS is serving special interests from private cattle ranchers, and is wreaking havoc on endangered wolf populations in the very areas where they were reintroduced by us, to save them from the brink of extinction in the U.S.
Please sign this petition to make your voice heard. Call on the USFWS to act on behalf of wildlife and the public trust, and cease the extermination of the Dell Creek wolf pack immediately.
Keep Wolves Protected, and Defend the Endangered Species Act.
Empowered by: The Endangered Species Coalition is a national network of hundreds of conservation, scientific, education, religious, sporting, outdoor recreation, business and community organizations working to protect our nation’s disappearing wildlife and last remaining wild places.
If anti-wolf legislators get their way, the result will be more state-led killing of wolves and a blow to the Endangered Species Act. Before the courts intervened, these four states allowed some of the most disturbing means of managing wolves:
State legislators in Michigan ignored the expressed will of voters and enacted aggressive wolf hunting in the state.
Like Wyoming, Minnesota allowed wolves to be killed virtually without limit in most of the state.
Wisconsin allowed the use of up to six dogs to pursue wolves, in addition to indiscriminate trapping.
These policies could immediately return if Congress strips wolves of Endangered Species Act protections. Please urge your U.S. representative to oppose H.R. 843 and H.R. 884.
More than 10,000 letters sent to the U.S. and Senate!
Thank you so much for helping us reach our initial goal. Continue to help keep wolves protected and defend endangered species by sharing this action with your family and friends!
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