Dear Friend,

As she promotes her new book, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota continues to defend the idea that it was okay for her to shoot a juvenile dog that she was not properly supervising.

The reaction around the nation to her cold-blooded decision to kill Cricket has been resoundingly unfavorable for the governor. Most political observers think she’s disqualified herself from vice presidential selection by former President Trump. That tells us something good about the power of the human-animal bond in our society.

Even fewer people are defending Cody Roberts, the sadist in Wyoming who ran over an adolescent female wolf as an act of hate and viciousness. After he chased and then crushed the wolf named Theia with a snowmobile for the hell of it, Roberts took the innocent wolf into his possession, bound her mouth, and then tortured her in a public setting before killing her.

The good news is, there were some witnesses, and at least one person came forward, documenting his savage acts. That decision to release photos and video of what he did allowed the story to ricochet around the world.

Please donate to continue supporting the work to spare thousands of animals from cruelty. For many animals, what we accomplish here means the difference between life and death.

Condemnation Alone Not Enough. We Need Change

But condemnation and outrage, while a proper emotional response to the horrors of these activities, are alone not a sufficient response. We need prosecution of people like Cody Roberts. And we need policy action by the likes of Kristi Noem and other politicians, from South Dakota and Wyoming to Washington D.C.

Noem’s killing of Cricket was just more evidence for us that she’s always come up short when it comes to animal welfare. In 2018, when serving South Dakota in the U.S. House of Representatives, Noem was one of fewer than two dozen Republicans to vote against a bill to crack down on dogfighting and cockfighting in the U.S. territories. There were 359 federal lawmakers who voted for the measure, but Noem and just 50 others opposed extending the national ban on animal fighting to every inch of U.S. soil.

Who votes to limit our federal laws against dogfighting and cockfighting, especially when we know that dogs and roosters are trafficked across state and federal lines every day to facilitate staged fights and put the conscripts in the pits?

That was such an important amendment because Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas all allowed legal cockfighting. Some of the territories also had anemic laws against dogfighting, and the bill sought to make all forms of animal fighting a federal felony, everywhere in the United States.

And now, America’s political leaders have multiple opportunities to do right by animals on a policy level. There are several measures pending to protect dogs, including the FIGHT Act to further enhance the legal framework against animal cruelty and amp up enforcement. The Greyhound Protection Act would end gambling on live or simulcast races. And the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 would compel FDA to get more beagles out of labs and promote better, safer, more effective 21st-century human-biology-based testing methods in place of the animal models.

The point is, there’s more to protecting dogs than condemning the extreme outliers in our society. We’ve got to prevent cruelty before it happens. We can have live entertainment and life sciences without victimizing dogs.

Roberts Must Be Prosecuted. But So Much More Needs to be Done

And it’s sad to say that Cody Roberts running down a wolf—the forebears of all of the domesticated dogs in our lives—was legal in Wyoming. That is an outrage.

We are calling on Wyoming to change its policies with respect to wolves. No more killing of wolves with snowmobiles, neck snares, steel-jawed leghold traps, or packs of dogs sicced on the wolves. No killing of wolves every day of the year, without limit and by any means.

By no means are we done with the Roberts case. There’s more work to do on that front than ever.

In the coming days, we’ll be asking you to take critical actions on policy issues.

And we ask you again to support this strategic and tactical work so that we can press ahead on so many fronts to fight cruelty, in every dark corner and open square where it occurs.

Stay with us in this fight.

Sincerely,

Wayne Pacelle President Center for a Humane Economy