14 April 2009

Open Firing on the Misunderstood Wolf

On May 4, United States government agents will be free to open fire on wolves. Not even newborn wolf pups and their nursing mothers will be spared.

Please help by sending an email to Interior Secretary Salazar through this easy contact form. While you are there, how about joining Robert Redford by becoming an NRDC BioGems Defender?

Robert Redford has long championed the cause of the wolf. Hear him on the first side of this record narrating "The Wolf You Never Knew" for the American Museum of Natural History in 1971 [320 kb/s, 32 Mb]. You can also click to hear the recording in lower quality [3.5 Mb].

Please take a moment to help save the wolves. Together we might convince the Obama administration to stop the slaughter of wolves and return our small wolf population to the status of Endangered Species. Thank you.
www.savebiogems.org/wolves/


"In 1930, a federal officer shot what was believed to be the last wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act and an ambitious reintroduction program, some 1,500 wolves have returned to the northern Rockies, and the howling wolf is once again the icon of western wilderness.

"But recently, Interior Secretary Salazar rubber-stamped a Bush-era plan to kick the wolves of the northern Rockies off the endangered species list and leave them vulnerable to mass killing. More than 600 wolves wolves could be caught in the crossfire of state-sponsored wolf hunts. NRDC is filing suit in federal court to block this disastrous policy. It’s a fight we’ve won before. In the summer of 2008, NRDC and 11 other conservation groups compelled the Bush administration to abandon its first attempt to strip wolves of their protection when we made the case that the wolves had not fully recovered.

"Over this past year, the wolf population of Yellowstone National Park declined 27 percent -- and more than 70% of wolf pups in the park died of disease. NRDC will be fighting in federal court to compel Secretary Salazar to withdraw this disastrous plan and submit it to the kind of rigorous scientific review that the Obama administration has championed on other issues." -- NRDC website