On January 14, WildEarth Guardians and our allies filed suit against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service challenging the premature stripping away of federal Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves across the entire lower 48 states. The 11th hour move by the Trump administration means gray wolves are now once again in hunter’s and trapper’s crosshairs. We refuse to accept this atrocity and are fighting by all legal means to overturn the decision and restore protections for gray wolves.
Wolves belong and they need our voices and our actions.
WildEarth Guardians has stood as a champion for the voiceless and the vulnerable for over three decades and has regularly fought so that gray wolves, other native carnivores, and hundreds of imperiled species have a chance to fully recover and thrive.
Over the past year, tens of thousands of you have signed our petitions, sent letters, and called officials to demand protection for wolves. You have stood with—and beside—us. As we look at the work ahead of us in 2021, I also ask you to stand with us again and consider supporting Guardians’ Wolf Defense Fund. I have high hopes of overturning this outrageous decision and it’s going to take time, effort, and significant resources for us to win—even with a new administration.
Guardians pledges to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to reverse the heinous decision to delist wolves and hand their fate to states and people that wish to once again see wolves slaughtered, trapped, and hunted—instead of revered, understood, and welcomed across the wilds of the American West.
Please stand with us again today, and be prepared to take action again soon on behalf of wolves.
On January 4th, gray wolves lost federal Endangered Species Act protections. The reckless decision by the Trump administration applies to all gray wolves in the lower 48 states despite the lack of scientific evidence showing true recovery across gray wolves’ historic range. WildEarth Guardians and our partners are currently working on our legal challenge, which will be filed later this month. For now, management of wolf populations has returned to individual state wildlife agencies, some of which are already reinstating hunting and trapping season on wolves.
Tragically, the state of Idaho offers a graphic example of what state “management” of wolves may look like across the American West. Wolves in Idaho lost federal Endangered Species Act protections in 2011 and today an individual may kill up to 30 wolves per year in Idaho. According to an analysis of records obtained by Western Watersheds Project, hunters, trappers, and state and federal agencies killed 570 wolves in Idaho during a 12-month period from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020. Included in the mortality are at least 35 wolf pups, some weighing less than 16 pounds and likely only 4 to 6 weeks old. Some of the wolves shattered teeth trying to bite their way out of traps, others died of hyperthermia in traps set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, and more were gunned down in aerial control actions. The total mortality during this period represented nearly 60 percent of the 2019 year-end estimated Idaho wolf population.
The recovery of gray wolves could be a heroic success story, but it will be cut short if this stripping away of federal Endangered Species Act protection stands. We can’t abandon fragile wolf-recovery efforts and allow anti-wolf states, hunters, and trappers to push these iconic species back to the brink of extinction without a fight. Please support Guardians’ Wolf Defense Fund with a gift today and help us ensure gray wolves have a future.
Then sign this petition urging the incoming Biden administration to immediately take action on January 20 to halt the impending slaughter and begin the process of restoring Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves. After you sign the petition, make sure to share it with your family, friends, and networks.
We’re in this for the long haul. WildEarth Guardians fights for the Wild—and with you at our side, we will protect and defend wolves.
In a recent phone conversation with a group of friends, we were asked to speak about loss as a sort of cathartic recognition of the feelings of the moment, induced by certain biological, viral, and political upheavals: what were we afraid of losing, what had we already lost, what does loss mean, and how do we cope with loss? In my work in landscape conservation, I think a lot about loss. I frame appeals around it, use it to drive action, construct science-based arguments from it, implement it in policy asks, use it as a metric to motivate advocacy. In my personal life, it has become, in no uncertain terms, the lens through which I view the world. Loss is life, it would seem.
This isn’t meant to be the doom and gloom opening to a lugubrious reflection on living through the Sixth Mass Extinction and anthropogenic climate crises. While it may be true that spending too much time mired in reports of species die-off events, catastrophic wildfires, and ever-increasing CO2 emissions doesn’t necessarily breed optimism nor hope, there are some important lessons to be learned and practices to be implemented from living as a loser. And the results of these lessons and practices seem to be, at least in my experience thus far, generative of tremendous gains. In some strange Zen-like twist, I am winning through losing.
I started losing the fall semester of my senior year at the University of New Mexico. I was finally on track to wrap up my undergraduate degree nearly 17 years after graduating high school. I had enrolled in an introductory class in the Art and Ecology Department on the Sixth Mass Extinction, which, for those not familiar, is currently unfolding before our very eyes, and for the first time in global history, humans are driving the extinction bus. Our end-of-year project was to create an artistically-inspired work about something locally related to the Sixth Mass Extinction. I ended up using story mapping software to develop a narrative about a geographic feature just west of where I grew up, called the Pajarito Plateau. Pajarito is the Spanish word for “little bird”, and the plateau, which lies at the foot of the Jemez Mountains, had long been known for its diverse and abundant bird populations.
That is, until anthropogenic climate change created megadrought conditions in the American Southwest, which led to increased vulnerabilities to certain fatal bark beetle infestations in trees, particularly the pinon pine in New Mexico. The pinon nut provides an important, calorie-dense food source for birds, and without it, numbers were dropping precipitously. So I learned about loss. And the more I learned about it, the more I longed to feel it. Not in the way reading a scientific paper full of facts and figures triggers an intellectual response that resembles a feeling. But in the way sitting on the land and noticing the gnarled corpses of pinon trees provokes an embodied, felt sense of something-that-was-that-is-no-longer.
I’ve always sought the out-of-doors as a place of renewal and rejuvenation. Growing up in the rural Nambe Valley north of Santa Fe, most of my earliest memories include the bright high desert sun warm on my face, the quiet thrill of discovering some small nook between the rocks or behind a tree that snuggly fit my little body, or simply watching the magic of the slow birth and dissolution of so many clouds over the mesa behind our house.
But somewhere along the road to “responsible” adulting, I forgot to notice. The writer and scholar Robert MacFarlane says, “Forgetting is an easy way to lose something.” And in forgetting to give my attention to the world, in that child-like way that inspires enchantment and adoration, I’d lost so much. Feeling the loss of los pajaritos brought it back. I began to notice the small details ever-present in the pinon-juniper woodland behind my home. I have come to recognize when a tree excretes sap in defense against a beetle infestation. I search for the hardened sap balls that are produced by the pitch tubes, near perfect spheres of golden amber. I spent the late summer months examining pine cones filled with pinon nuts, trying to determine what color shells reliably yield the meaty sweet fruit that I and so many other forest dwellers were seeking.
It was as if something had been returned to me: a sense of place, a knowing, a recognition. And though the weight of so much loss has not grown lighter on my shoulders or in my heart, the world has given me something to remedy my spirit. When you choose to attend to those others, to the feathered and four-legged and rooted ones, to notice the ways they engage with the world, the ways they create and give form to an inhabitable Earth, you can’t help but admire their resilience, their tenacity, their courage. This is all that I have won as I have lost. Forgetting is an easy way to lose something. We owe it to the great blue world to remember. We have a moral obligation to do as much.
When I first met the Mexican gray wolves of the Greater Gila, after researching their extirpation from the American West and then following their slow, tenuous reintroduction, I realized this obligatory remembering was not mine alone to carry. So many others, often guided by Indigenous allies who have not forgotten, and inspired by their Traditional Ecological Knowledge, are committing and recommitting to remembering, restoring, reclaiming and restructuring in service of a broader, more diverse, more cared for sense of community.
At this historical, political, social, ecological moment, so much is framed in terms of wins and losses. I think it’s safe to say no one victory is ever only triumph, and no forfeiture only ever deprivation. The world is far too complex to exist in such polarized binaries. Perhaps it is time we inhabit the space between, the interstices where life and lessons foment and bubble over, connecting us to ourselves, to each other, to the vast web of this existence, where no one is really ever keeping score.
As promised, WildEarth Guardians and our allies filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service challenging the Trump administration’s decision to prematurely strip gray wolves of federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections across the entire lower 48 states. The notice, filed on November 6, starts a 60-day clock, after which Guardians and our coalition will file a lawsuit in federal court.
The most recent data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and its state partners show an estimated 4,400 wolves inhabit the western Great Lakes states, but only 108 wolves in Washington state, 158 in Oregon, and a scant 15 in California. Nevada, Utah, and Colorado have had a few wolf sightings over the past three years, but wolves remain functionally extinct in these states. These numbers lay the groundwork for a legal challenge planned by a coalition of Western conservation groups.
“As we’ve seen over the past week, counting and numbers are not a strength of the Trump administration,” said Lindsay Larris, wildlife program director at WildEarth Guardians. “No matter how you try to spin the data, wolves do not even inhabit 20 percent of historic range. This is not true recovery under the Endangered Species Act and a clear violation of the law.”
In delisting wolves, USFWS ignores the science showing they are not recovered in the West. The USFWS concluded that because in its belief there are sufficient wolves in the Great Lakes states, it does not matter that wolves in the West are not yet recovered. The ESA demands more, including restoring the species in the ample suitable habitats afforded by the wild public lands throughout the West. Wolves only occupy a small portion of available, suitable habitat in Oregon and Washington, and remain absent across vast swaths of their historical habitat in the West, including in Colorado and the southern Rockies.
The restoration of gray wolves could be a heroic success story, but it will be cut tragically short if wolves lose further protection under the ESA now. We can’t let fragile wolf-recovery efforts to be stalled and allow states, hunters, and trappers to push the species back to the brink of extinction without a fight. Please support Guardians’ Wolf Defense Fund with a gift today and help us ensure gray wolves have a future.
One other thing you can do is sign this petition urging the incoming Biden administration to immediately take action on January 20 to halt the impending slaughter and begin the process of restoring ESA protections for gray wolves. After you sign, make sure to share the petition with your family, friends, and networks. Thank you!
UPDATE (December 11, 2020): Thank you to everyone who wrote the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the last month demanding that they not harm these wolves. Our understanding is that the livestock are no longer in the area and no wolves were captured or harmed.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—the agency tasked with recovering critically endangered Mexican gray wolves—is working right now to trap and remove wolves from the wilds of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico at the behest of livestock producers who are grazing non-native cattle on public lands for private profit.
Wolves from the Sheepherders Baseball Park Pack or the Pitchfork Canyon Pack are blamed for killing around 3% of one rancher’s herd of cows. In comparison, the federal government has killed about 3% of the entire wild Mexican wolf population this year in the name of social tolerance. It seems that tolerance only goes one way.
Help us stop this wolf removal! Send an email to mexicanwolfcomments@fws.gov today. Tell U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service why you support wild wolves over destructive, non-native cattle. Explain that the agency’s job is to protect and recover endangered Mexican gray wolves, not cows. Tell them to stop the removal of these endangered, wild lobos—fewer than 170 of which live in the American Southwest.
Please keep your comments civil, as hostile language is counterproductive. When you email, it is helpful to copy us (info@wildearthguardians.org) so the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can’t claim to not have received your note. Thank you for taking action to defend lobos!
Learn more about this situation here.
Now, perhaps more than ever, it is important to ask the question, “what does our country need most?” To that question, I answer “grown-ups.” The Cambridge dictionary defines “grown-up” as someone who behaves in a mature and responsible way. It is not unusual for a child to complain, call people names, and avoid responsibilities. But, for an adult, that behavior is unacceptable at best, and dangerous at worst.
We live at a time of declining trust in government institutions—and with good reason. Deep economic and racial injustice, political polarization, and a world wide pandemic are just a few of the responsibilities our government has failed to address.
Yet, at a time when my faith in many American institutions is declining, I still have faith in some of the good people who serve in government.
This week, WildEarth Guardians settled our lawsuit with the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agreement elevates the protection of the Mexican spotted owl and the ancient forest habitat that the owl depends on.
The agreement brings to an end the massive legal injunction on tree-cutting on six national forests in New Mexico and Arizona. A federal judge put that injunction in place after he determined that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to monitor spotted owl populations.
This injunction was the third issued by a federal judge since the owl was listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1993—what has to be a record for federal judicial accountability. The decades-long conflict over national forests and spotted owls in the American Southwest is a microcosm for the loss of trust in government institutions. On all sides of the debate, there is a belief that the Forest Service has failed to be responsible in its role of managing the national forests.
Rather than doing its job—namely, performing a serious study on the health of the spotted owl—the Forest Service dissembled and whined. And when the courts prevented logging, the Forest Service placed the blame on others. Leadership at the Forest Service viewed our public lands as their own “toy chest,” with the intention of sharing their “toys” only with their friends—those with power, influence, and money.
Fortunately, there are still some grown-ups at the Forest Service. People like Elaine Kohrman, the Deputy Regional Forester, who helped navigate the challenges that arose during our negotiations. I believe this agreement could not have come about without her leadership and vision.
Elaine, and her team, saw this conflict as an opportunity to set things right and to chart a new course for the Forest Service and the spotted owl. I commend her for that. I suspect it was not an easy path she chose. She probably met with serious resistance, but she did the mature, responsible thing. She reminds me of a time when our institutions served the people—not the other way around. Her efforts, along with other public servants who care deeply about our forests, avoided further polarization and led to common ground.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a Guardian. As much as I believe in collaboration, I also believe in conflict as a necessary part of social change, whether as an antidote to power inequity or as a remedy for historic injustice.
And I still believe that when a government breaks its promises to uphold the law and protect the public interest, citizens can enforce our laws as a means to not only protect civic engagement but also the rule of law.
One of the guiding principles of how national forests are supposed to be managed is through a scientific process of ‘adaptive management.’ Adaptive management done right builds trust—done wrongly it reinforces a mistrust that can become toxic to forests, people, and agencies.
I believe our agreement decreases the likelihood of ecological damage of all future tree cutting in and outside of spotted owl habitat. Still, there is more to be done.
One of the most destructive things President Trump has done over the last three and a half years is systematically rid our government of good public servants, whether by harassment, intimidation or the despair of working for a leader who doesn’t have your back. In short, he has attempted a purge of all the “grown-ups.” The hollowing out of government institutions has been one of the defining features and strategies of the Trump administration.
I’m encouraged to know that, in spite of these conditions, some good public servants are still hanging on. It’s easier than ever to get discouraged in these times—not only by the challenges we face but also by our imperfect government. My advice is don’t get discouraged. My advice is don’t whine, but act. We can start by acknowledging the hard work of public servants who fight the good fight.
It’s true that I believe that the settlement of this Endangered Species Act conflict will be good for threatened Mexican spotted owls and our national forests—and that matters deeply to me. But perhaps of far greater importance is that this agreement restores a small measure of faith that there are still some grown-ups who yet remain in our government.
If, like them, we can address the problems we face in a mature and responsible way, I am convinced we will overcome them all.
When I awoke in the darkness, the first thing I felt was the soreness in my quads and calves. I wasn’t sure if it was the muscle pain or the hunger pains that had woken me. Maybe it was something else entirely—something stirring outside my tent.
That’s what it was—a sound. Not just any sound, but a sound I’d never heard before. At first, it was indiscernible. After a moment, it was unmistakable. Almost like a song. One voice, then two… then three… then, an entire chorus.
I tried to focus, but my damn sleeping bag was making all those crinkly sounds as I tried to settle my body into a comfortable position. When I was finally still, the singing grew clearer—not just the sound, but the echo as well. The echo of wolves—howling in some place that seemed, at once, both far away and very near.
It was the fifth, and last, night of our backpack into the Gila Wilderness. I had been longing to hear those sounds for many years and perhaps, in my wishful greed, to catch a sight of the wolves themselves. My only regret from that night is that I didn’t wake my wife, Terry. But if you knew her particular relationship with sleep, you’d understand.
The three-legged alpha male of the Middle Fork pack. Photo by the Mexican Wolf Interagency Field Team.
Weeks later, the wonder I felt that night transformed into sadness and outrage, as I realized those were the howls of the Middle Fork Pack, wolves that roamed the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Gila River.
I was saddened because I knew both the alpha female and alpha male of that pack only had three legs. Each victims of human cruelty—in one case, a gun shot wound. In the other, a steel trap.
Nevertheless, these incredible animals persisted and persevered for nearly a decade. They successfully raised wolf pups in the wild canyons, pine forests and remote grasslands within and on the edge of the Gila—America’s first wilderness.
In a sense, those of us who care about protecting these wolves are working with one of our legs missing as well.
Seemingly every day over the last four years, the Trump administration has systematically dismantled the environmental safety net. Regardless of who is elected in November, we will be working at a greater disadvantage than we were just four years ago.
But, if we persevere, as the wolves did in the face of adversity, we can still accomplish much. I believe that if we work half as hard as the wolves do, we can accomplish twice as much as we ever have.
We also can each learn something else from the Middle Fork wolves. It’s that there is strength in numbers and that we are more resilient when we look after every member of our pack. There’s likely no way a three-legged wolf could survive on its own, but working together they overcame significant obstacles.
When I think about how many Guardians there are in the world—and by that I simply mean compassionate people who protect the vulnerable—I am heartened by people’s commitment. But I am also aware that we are simply not enough people. We need more Guardians. I want every one of you reading these words to reach out to people you are not convinced share our value of protecting the vulnerable.
You may ask “why?” It’s because there is so much more at stake. It’s not just environmental protection that is being eviscerated, it is democracy itself.
But if we are to ultimately persevere in our quest, whatever it may be, we cannot focus only on the injuries from the past. I can’t imagine the Middle Fork wolves spent a moment in self-pity about their wounds. What propelled them forward was a fierce clarity about their purpose of protecting their pack. What will propel us forward is a compelling vision for the future. A key part of that vision is the recognition that we all share more in common than we usually think.
By focusing on what we have in common, rather than our differences, we can increase the size of our pack. In doing so, we will increase our political power and our ability to advocate on the behalf of the Middle Fork pack and the natural world in general. Doing this will require expanding our circle of compassion.
Perhaps it is naïve, but I believe the practice of compassion can be a compelling force. Many times, I have written about the need for society to expand the circle of compassion to include those who have historically been marginalized—women, minorities, the disabled, and the entire natural world. If we, as environmentalists, can expand our circle of compassion to include new, unlikely allies—I believe we will be more effective in achieving our goals.
Though the Middle Fork Pack sadly no longer endures, I hope their story becomes a part of your story about how we can be more resilient during these uncertain times. Let their story remind us that, with perseverance, we can overcome great obstacles.
Let us remind ourselves that we are members of a pack with room to grow, both in numbers and compassion. With that unified purpose, we will find strength and comfort, from ourselves and from each other, and together we will accomplish great things.
Last month, hundreds of thousands of birds dropped dead out of the skies of New Mexico, in a scene reminiscent of a Hollywood disaster movie. The world is facing an extinction crisis, a biodiversity collapse. Events such as this are likely to become more common.
The rapid loss of plants and animals across the globe is nothing new, scientists and conservationists have been raising the alarm for decades. But this nightmare—literally happening in our backyards—puts the catastrophe in stark relief and should make every New Mexican rise up to demand action from state leadership. New Mexico is one of the most biodiverse states in the union. We host both subtropic species and subarctic species and our range of ecosystems, plants, and critters is part of our cultural heritage and our economic future. Biodiversity is an asset worth bending over backwards to protect.
But who or what protects the great biodiversity of New Mexico? The agency theoretically tasked with this consequential job is the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. But the Department is primarily interested in promoting hunting and propagating species of interest to hunters and anglers. Most state wildlife agencies are the same in terms of focus.
Game and Fish sometimes does a praise-worthy job at protecting wildlife, but often policies have little to do with conservation. Oryx brought in from Africa in the late 1960s to excite and lure hunters with the prospect of “exotic species” are now imperiling Chihuahuan Desert grasslands. The Department pays six figures a year to private trappers who kill native mountain lions for the expressed purpose of recovering desert bighorn sheep. But then the Department turns around and sells tags to hunt said bighorn sheep. Millions of non-native trout are dumped into New Mexico’s waterways even while native species like Cutthroat and Gila trout struggle with shrinking ranges.
Emails promoting hunting and fishing are seemingly the agency’s bread and butter. An April email instructed the public on how to make “Dutch oven doves.” And of course, the Department allows unlimited killing of furbearers like bobcats, foxes, badgers, and beavers by private, commercial trappers, even encouraging children to take part.
New Mexico needs a Department of Wildlife. Or a Department of Biodiversity. Or an agency by any name that is willing to put its resources into staving off the collapse of our wildlife rather than sharing recipes for sandhill crane (another recent offering from Game and Fish).
To be clear, this is not a criticism of ethical subsistence hunting—in a good year my family has Chama-area elk in the freezer. And on many weekends, I can be found casting flies on our gorgeous rivers and streams. I know NMDGF staff who are knowledgeable, hardworking, and true conservationists. Moreover, the Department alone doesn’t dictate its mission. Funding and laws guide the agency towards serving hunters and hunting. And the Department doesn’t even have management authority over many species.
An overriding question for most state wildlife agencies is, “how do we stay relevant?” This was a focal topic at the 2019 Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies meeting. The answer has never been more obvious: protect biodiversity. There are literally birds falling out of the sky en masse. Our ecosystems are at risk. What New Mexico urgently needs is an agency that will confront the most relevant crises of our generation.
Game and Fish has had plenty of time to shift its focus. Climate change and extinction are not exactly new. For years, advocates have encouraged the Department to protect all wildlife, to diversify its funding to achieve this new and necessary goal, and to put long-term economic and ecological health over—or at the very least alongside—hunting. Our wildlife and plant populations don’t have the luxury of waiting any longer.
The federal government is fast-tracking annihilation. U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s mission has changed under Trump towards supporting hunting and fishing, developing energy and natural resources, and “protecting people and our border.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency in charge of protecting imperiled species, requested a stunningly paltry $9 million to list and delist endangered species and designate critical habitat. Most of that money appears to be spent de-listing species that have not yet actually recovered. Hunting was even expanded in National Wildlife Refuges this year as the backlog of species needing protection and headed towards extinction grows even longer.
New Mexico needs to lead. Our State Wildlife Action Plan is underfunded. Resources are spent recruiting hunters instead of recovering imperiled wildlife. Yes, money is hard to find. And yes, there are challenging sidebars that need to come down. Change takes time. But our wildlife does not have time.
The Department and our elected leaders need to do some soul searching. New revenues, new ideas, new stakeholders, and a new direction have never been more important.
We need a wildlife conservation agency, not more bird recipes.
Let’s take a moment to celebrate good news for wolves in Washington! Thanks to guardians like you, our message was heard loud and clear: Washington’s iconic wolves deserve protection and non-lethal management should be prioritized.
During the past two weeks, more than 8,500 of you took action by urging Governor Jay Inslee to approve our appeal for better wolf management rules. On September 4, Gov. Inslee heard you and directed the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission to initiate a new rulemaking process to develop “clear” and “enforceable” measures designed to avoid the repeated slaughter of wolves in the state, which has resulted in 34 dead wolves since 2012.
Rulemaking is a transparent process which allows for public input. The process also requires that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife consider the use of science-backed, non-lethal measures to deter livestock-wolf conflicts and examine chronic conflict zones where problems have occurred year after year. Washington has the opportunity to be a leader in wolf management and this is an exciting step towards a better future for wolves in the state and across the West.
You and other wolf advocates helped make this victory possible, and your voices will certainly be needed again as we enter the rulemaking process. For today, join us in celebrating this important step toward better rules for Washington’s wolves and know that your continued support and partnership will enable us to keep defending wolves throughout the American West.
In good news for wildlife coexistence, Gov. Jay Inslee has directed the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission to draft new rules governing the killing of wolves involved in conflicts with livestock. This action reverses the commission’s denial of a petition filed by WildEarth Guardians and our allies in May that called for reform of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s lethal wolf-management policies.
The new rules will address the use of science-backed non-lethal measures to avoid livestock-wolf conflicts. They will likely further examine chronic conflict areas where the state has killed wolves year after year. The state has killed 34 wolves since 2012. Twenty-nine were killed for the same livestock owner in prime wolf habitat in the Colville National Forest. After the Fish and Wildlife Commission denied the wolf advocates’ petition in June, the groups appealed to the governor, who had 45 days to decide whether to deny the appeal or require the commission to create new wolf-management rules.
“Demonstrating a commitment to environmental leadership, Gov. Inslee has put the Department on notice: It’s time for better rules, and public transparency, when it comes to Washington’s iconic wolves. The killing of the entire Wedge Pack this year was unacceptable; it has happened before and it should never happen again,” said Samantha Bruegger, Wildlife Coexistence Campaigner at WildEarth Guardians. “A huge thank you to WildEarth Guardians members and supporters who sent Gov. Inslee over 8,500 emails and made a ton of phone calls over the past few weeks. Together, we will end the war on wolves and other native wildlife.”
