Our worst fears have been confirmed.
Today
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) formally proposed to strip
nearly all gray wolves across the United States of protection under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA).
If this ill-advised
plan goes forward, decades of hard-won wolf conservation progress will be severely
undermined, and the future of gray wolf conservation will be forever
changed.
Defenders of
Wildlife will do whatever it takes to keep this from happening, but we urgently
need your help.
What a
tragedy. Wolf recovery still has a long way to go. What should be one of America’s greatest endangered species comeback
stories could become a heartbreaking setback.
We have seen
what happens when premature delisting leaves wolves to the mercy of anti-wolf
politics and politicians that are unwilling to protect them. In Wyoming,
Montana and Idaho, more than 1,100 wolves have been shot or trapped since losing
ESA protection in 2011. And we have seen some of Yellowstone National Park’s
most iconic and beloved wolves shot and killed just across the park border.
It’s not too
late to stop this irresponsible proposal. The FWS’s federal
delisting proposal is open for public comment for the next 90 days. We will use the comment period to wage
an unprecedented initiative to try to convince the Obama administration to do the
right thing.
- We are mobilizing wolf-lovers like you to express outrage over this proposal. We’ve already collected more than 230,000 signatures demanding that wolves continue to receive protection under the ESA.
- We are providing the expert ESA policy and legal analysis that makes it clear that delisting is premature (and sets a dangerous precedent for other imperiled animals); and
- We’ll be prepared to go to court if necessary to challenge any premature delisting of gray wolves.
We are going to do whatever it takes to retain
needed protections for wolves and other iconic species.
Thank you for all you do for wildlife.*Article courtesy of Defenders of Wildlife - www.defenders.org
