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Dear friend,
There are two urgent battles for wolves staring us in the face in the new Congress, and we need your help.
Anti-wolf zealots, such as Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., see opportunity after November’s election results, with Republicans in charge of both chambers of Congress and the presidency.
Last year, Boebert, who has no wolves in her new district, did the bidding of trophy hunters by pushing for a House floor vote on her bill, the “Trust the Science Act,” to remove all federal protections for wolves across most of their range in the United States. The vote was 209–205, and if just two Members had switched their “yes” votes to “no,” we would have blocked the bill in the House.
It was only determined Democrats in the Senate, led by our allies Sens. Cory Booker and Jeff Merkley, who stopped the bill in the upper chamber and preserved federal protections for wolves under the Endangered Species Act.
But Booker and Merkley are now in the minority, and the Senate is going to be a much tougher place to stop a wolf-delisting effort. With the margin of control narrowed by two votes since the last election, the House is now our best chance at halting Boebert’s delisting crusade.
When Congress Delisted Wolves a Decade Ago, the Effects Were Deadly, Inhumane
We already have seen the horrific effects of delisting of wolves in a portion of their range in the lower 48 states. In 2012, former U.S. Senator Jon Tester, D-Mont. — who was defeated in his 2024 re-election campaign — engineered the lifting of protections for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountain states by an act of Congress.
Since that time, it’s been nothing but persecution of wolves in that part of the world. Montana allows wolves who stray from just over the border of Yellowstone National Park to be mowed down with firearms and traps; the governor of Montana even personally trapped a wolf for sport right outside the park! Idaho allows teams of dogs to be used as weapons in attacking wolves. And in Wyoming, the state even permits people to run down and run over wolves with snowmobiles.
You can draw a straight line from congressional delisting to the crushing of an adolescent wolf in Wyoming by masochistic rancher and trophy hunter Cody Roberts.
Extremist Voices Are in Control of Wildlife Policy in Some States
In the northern Rocky states, there are many people who appreciate wolves. They understand that wolves are the forebears of the domesticated dogs who are members of their family. And so many people understand that wolves play a crucial role in balancing ecosystems — checking the growth of deer and elk and bison populations — along with bringing economic development through wolf-watching to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
But wolf allies in these states are too often drowned out by the more shrill voices who want to kill wolves wherever they are found. Boebert is fronting for these voices.
If Boebert and her allies succeed, we may see hound-hunting of wolves in Wisconsin — again — setting up a veritable dogfighting situation in the north woods. We’ll see the use of steel-jawed leghold traps to catch wolves in Michigan and Minnesota. And we may see miscreants in more states get on their snowmobiles and run over wolves for fun.
That threat of even more snowmobile ramming and crushing of wolves is precisely why we must fight a two-front action in Congress. Just as we push back against an unwarranted congressional delisting — making endangered species listing decisions a purely political affair — we must push forward the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act.
Among states with wolves, Colorado and Minnesota have laws that ban running over wolves with snowmobiles. But so many other states with wolves do not have similar protections. In many places, it’s a free-for-all. And just a few sadists can have an outsized impact in terrorizing these animals if there are no legal proscriptions to stop them.
That’s why today, I am sending up a flare that wolves have never been at greater risk in the lower 48 states. They are being assaulted in the northern Rockies, and that’s why we’ve sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to restore protections for wolves in the face of an overreaching and reckless assault on them by three states.
But now it’s all wolves in the lower 48 states who are at risk. We must fight off the delisting work to establish the most basic fundamental feature of a safety net — a prohibition on using motorized vehicles to run them down on federal land.
Passing the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act will counter inaction by the states on the use of snowmobiles to injure and kill wolves in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. And it will preempt other states from taking aim at wolves if the Congress removes federal protections for wolves in the remaining portion of their range in more than a dozen other states.
I hope you’ll reach your lawmakers and urge them to oppose Rep. Boebert’s wolf-delisting bill and also support the forthcoming Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act, to be introduced by Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Don Davis, D-N.C.
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And please support our work today. Along with blocking the EATS Act — to overturn our state farm animal welfare laws — the fight over wolves may be the toughest animal protection battle of this Congress. [[link removed]]
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Thank you for standing strong for the forebears of the domesticated dog. They feel pain in the same way. They don’t deserve to be tortured and killed out of some irrational exuberance and hatred.
For the wolves,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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