Keep federal protections for wolves

Below is an email from Elissa Wagner, a MoveOn member in Aptos, California. Elissa started a petition on the MoveOn website, where anyone can start their own online petition.

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Don't let special interests dictate the fate of gray wolves. Sign the Petition!

Dear MoveOn member,

Gray wolves in the lower 48 states have been hunted, trapped, and poisoned to near-extinction. With the passage of the federal Endangered Species Act in 1973, the gray wolf was designated an endangered species. In places like Yellowstone National Park, the health of ecosystems depends on the presence of top predators, such as the gray wolf.

Now, however, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) wants to remove the gray wolf from its endangered species status in all of the lower 48 except in the Southwest, claiming the wolf has recovered. The science says otherwise: In the lower 48 states there are fewer than 5,500 wolves, less than 1% of their original numbers. Wolves are found in only 5% of the area they once roamed.

Tell FWS to maintain federal protections for gray wolves.

In an outrageous, unprecedented action in which politicians, rather than scientists, decided the fate of an endangered species, a 2011 rider attached to a Congressional appropriations bill delisted wolves in the Northern Rockies. And in 2012, the FWS removed endangered species status for wolves in the Western Great Lakes area. In the past two years, wolves in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes regions have been hunted down, gassed, and trapped, in aggressive, state-sanctioned hunting and trapping seasons. In this short amount of time, more than 1,700 wolves have been killed in these states. At this rate, wolves—which are in the early stages of recovery—will be quickly wiped out.

The FWS should not delist the gray wolf but should instead maintain the wolf's endangered species status and embark on a national wolf recovery plan that would restore wolves to significant portions of their former range.

That's why I started a petition to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, which says:

We oppose the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to delist the gray wolf from endangered species status, as the wolf has not approached recovery. Instead, the delisting could lead to the wolf's extermination. We ask that the wolf's endangered species status be maintained and that the FWS embark on a national wolf recovery plan that would restore wolves to significant portions of their former range.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

–Elissa Wagner

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This email was sent to eddie alfaro on September 14, 2013. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.