SPEAK UP FOR WASHINGTON'S WOLVES ~ CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY

SPEAK UP FOR WASHINGTON'S WOLVES 

Please sign and share the letter in the link below 

~ via Center for Biological Diversity

http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=14015

Art ( c ) 2003 H. Kyoht Luterman

The petititon:

Washington's magnificent wolves are making a comeback. To help them, a state Wolf Conservation and Management Plan was developed after an extensive, five-year public process. 

In late July the Center for Biological Diversity and our allies petitioned Washington to make the wolf plan legally enforceable. Instead, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission is considering proposals to increase cases where wolves can be killed and when compensation is paid after wolf predation on domestic animals.

The parts of the plan that protect wolves aren't being considered, and a meeting has been planned for Aug. 2 to make a decision on the proposed changes.

Please tell the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission not to expand wolf killing but instead focus on making the 2011 plan law.

And join the Center's West Coast Wolf Organizer, Amaroq Weiss, at the hearing in Olympia on Friday, Aug. 2 if you'd like to speak up for wolves in person.

Protect Washington's Wolf Plan and Save Wolves

Please protect Washington's wolves by honoring the five-year, comprehensive process that created the Wolf Conservation and Management Plan. I urge you not to adopt any of the amendments or new sections being proposed for the Washington Advisory Code that depart from the state's wolf plan.

  

The plan protects wolves and also prevents and reduces wolf-livestock related conflicts. This was done to prevent economic harm to livestock producers who raise and sell livestock for a living and simultaneously ensure that wolf recovery goals are not jeopardized. The plan was developed with input from 17 stakeholder representatives, comments from more than 65,000 members of the public, and scientific reviews by 43 biologists and wildlife managers. On their recommendations, the plan allows livestock owners to kill a wolf under certain circumstances -- if it is caught attacking livestock -- and provides compensation for livestock losses. 

The proposed amendments remove the plan's requirement that the livestock be held commercially or even that the animal in question be livestock. Instead these changes would allow wolves to be killed for an attack on any domestic animal of any kind. And any attack of a domestic animal also requires compensation. These changes disregard the careful balancing that is an important part of the wolf plan -- protecting the livelihoods of livestock producers without placing wolves at increased risk of being killed.

It is incomprehensible that none of the wolf plan's provisions for conserving and protecting wolves are being proposed to be made legally enforceable -- including requiring monitoring, annual reports, education and outreach, meeting population objectives before state delisting can occur and nonlethal conflict-management.

The proposed amendments significantly depart from the Washington's wolf plan while undermining the efforts of the stakeholders involved in that process and substantially weakening protections for wolves.

Please stand up for the wolf plan and for Washington's wolves and reject these unjustified, one-sided proposals.