͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. If you’d like to unsubscribe, click here. [[link removed]]

​​[link removed] [[link removed]]The Wyoming wolf, whom we’ve named Theia, is shown in what appears to be a corner of the Green River Bar in Daniel, Wyo. That’s where Cody Roberts took her for more torture in her final minutes of life.
Dear friend,
I want to assure you that we won’t rest until there’s some measure of accountability for Cody Roberts. He’s the miscreant who ran over a wolf with a snowmobile and then did even more unthinkable things to the poor adolescent female once he took her captive.
She didn’t have a name. But she was a beautiful girl, with that thick coat and beautiful coloring. Her life mattered to her. But that marauder Roberts ran her down with a 700-pound vehicle and stole her from her social group, her pack. And then he delivered trauma. And he kept delivering it.
What she went through matters to me. And I know it matters to you.
She deserves an identity, even if it’s posthumously designated. She should be named Theia, who in Greek mythology is the goddess of light.
I want her terrible experience to spill a bright light on what’s happening with wolves. I want her suffering to serve as a disinfectant and clean up senseless, retrograde wolf-treatment policies in several states.
And I want politicians and commissioners and others to understand that Americans loathe what Roberts did. And the other implements of wolf torment in Wyoming—neck snares and the steel traps—aren’t any better. And most people intuitively understand that using packs of dogs to hunt wolves is a form of animal fighting.
The outpouring of indignation for Theia shows that so many millions of us care about wolves. They want accountability, but they also want this ugly era of exploiting them for no good reason to end.
I want badly to see Roberts charged with felony animal cruelty under Wyoming law. Thanks to our pressure—your pressure, in making this a global news story and social media outrage—the local authorities in Sublette County, where Roberts’ serial acts of cruelty occurred, have opened a case.
That’s a first step. Next, I want Theia’s story to shine a light on the unwarranted hatred toward wolves that too many people still exhibit.
In Wyoming, it is legal to run down a wolf with a snowmobile and ram and crush the animal. What heartless world do legislators inhabit where they reject a call to impose a prohibition against that under law? In Wyoming, there are no protections for wolves on 85 percent of the state’s massive land area. That means you can kill them in any number, for any reason, and without limit on methods. You can even pour acid on them.
I’m telling you, it’s unthinkable. Unimaginable. Theia’s story reminds us that the unimaginable is law in Wyoming.
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Suing the Federal Government for Dereliction of Duty
I am so deeply disappointed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected our petition to restore federal protections for wolves in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. If a state doesn’t have the most elemental instincts to responsibly steward wolf populations—if it cannot even ban ramming and crushing wolves with a snowmobile—then how can that state be trusted to manage a species that is now on the federal list of endangered species in dozens of other states?
And using dogs to chase and attack wolves, setting up an open-air animal fighting situation?
If the states are going to allow massive killing of species that remain on the endangered list in the vast majority of our country—removed from the federally protected list in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho because of a Congressional rider and timid action from the USFWS—then it should not be permitted to allow lawless cruelty. The animals, precisely because of the failure of state management, must be protected under federal law.
We’re going to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for not holding Wyoming and other states accountable and to maintain a necessary safety net for wolves. Our first tranche of evidence in making that case is the Roberts/Theia story. Roberts felt he could do anything to wolves, and that’s exactly what he did.
Theia’s torment—which included Roberts wrapping tape around a grievously wounded young girl’s mouth before he paraded her at a bar and abused her in front of patrons—won’t be forgotten. Her forlorn look of defeat, after the man maliciously hurt her with a machine and then disabled her and propped her up for a photo, will stay with me forever.
We’re turning that photo into light to drive policy change. And there’s new video out today about her abuse, and we will make sure the world sees that pitiable footage, too.
The Kinship of Wolves and Dogs
Wolves are the forebears of domesticated dogs in our homes and in our lives. They are made of the same sinew and bone and nerves. When you commit an act of cruelty against a wolf, it’s not morally different from doing the same thing to a German shepherd or a beagle. They are of the same kind. Every one of them matters.
We are going to start an advertising campaign in Wyoming to keep her story in the forefront of the minds of Wyoming residents. They will demand change. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon has condemned Roberts’ barbaric acts. That’s a good start. But we need policy changes in the state. The governor should lead the charge.
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We cannot be bystanders when cases like this arise. We must not leave it to someone else to seek justice. And we must fight to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again.

Sincerely,

Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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