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Dear Terry, Today marks the beginning of what may be the last battle for the survival of wolves in the U.S. northern Rockies. Today, 10 conservation groups challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“the Service”) over its failure to list western wolves under the Endangered Species Act. The Service’s recent “not warranted” finding ignores obvious threats to the species, runs contrary to the best available science, and relies on flawed population models for its determination. A 2023 study found Idaho and Montana state population models were badly biased, and likely to overestimate total wolf populations by as much as 50%. Combined these population models constitute a “precariously misleading situation for decision-makers that threatens wolf populations”. Yet the Service relied on these flawed population estimates to wrongfully conclude wolves in the West are not at risk of eradication. A second 2023 study by world renown wolf geneticist Dr. Bridgett vonHoldt and others found wolf populations in the northern Rockies are losing genetic variability and below genetic minimum viable population levels at today’s populations. At present, wolf populations in California and the Cascade Range of western Oregon and Washington, Utah, Nevada, and northern Arizona are far below minimum viable population thresholds. Worse yet, evidence is
growing rapidly of wolves left suffering for days in traps, pups and their
mothers killed in their dens, and now a public display of a wolf being
tortured to death in Wyoming days ago. This young wolf is a victim of state
encouraged eradication of wolves. Read more here. |
Photo credit: Cowboy State
Daily |
Enough is enough. We MUST act now or lose the region’s wolf population again to “Old West” brutality. We are one of the leading organizations working ON THE GROUND in Idaho and across the northern Rockies to stop this brutal eradication of America’s wolves. We need your help. Please consider a
generous donation knowing that we will use it to the utmost to directly aid
wolves here and together we are making a difference. |
Suzanne Asha Stone Executive Director International Wildlife
Coexistence Network |
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