Wolf Extermination Bills in Congress

NM Wild Action Center

150 WORDS FROM YOU CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXTINCTION AND SURVIVAL.

Mexican gray wolves need your help to stop Congress from taking away the safety net of the Endangered Species Act. Thanks to this important environmental law, we still have wolves in New Mexico and Arizona playing their part in the balance of nature.
Just 50 Mexican wolves remain in the wild today. While their numbers have improved modestly in the last year, they are teetering on the brink of extinction.
Now is not the time for Congress to remove protections for imperiled Mexican wolves and open the door for state wildlife agencies like the Arizona Game and Fish Department to kill wolves when they inconvenience livestock owners.
Wildlife officials in Wyoming have said they would allow wolves to be shot, trapped, and poisoned on sight. The state of Idaho’s official position is that there should be zero wolves in the state. Montana wants to institute a wolf hunting season.
If the bills introduced by Congressman Rehberg and Senator Hatch or similar bills pass, the fate of gray wolves will be decided by state agencies that say they would kill them. This is like putting banks in charge of financial reform.
This is the greatest threat to the Mexican wolf’s survival since its first extinction in the wild around 1980, when the last seven were protected and later bred in captivity. The nearly extinct lobo was reintroduced because of the Endangered Species Act.

That’s why people are calling these bills what they really are: wolf extinction bills.

And they put more than wolves in peril -they threaten all wildlife and the Endangered Species Act itself. Never before has Congress stripped ESA protection from a single species – this sets a dangerous precedent to let any animal go extinct based on politics rather than the sound science the ESA requires.
You can tell your members of Congress, your state government, and hundreds to thousands of your fellow citizens to stop wolf extinction bills with one short letter, if you send it to a newspaper.
Surveys show that the letters page is one of the most closely read parts of the paper. It’s also the page policy-makers look to as a barometer of public opinion. If you mention AZ Game and Fish and/or Senators Kyl, McCain, Udall, and Bingaman in your letter, the agency or Senator’s staff will most likely see that letter during a regular scan of the media.

NM Wild Action Center