Senator Klobuchar Co-sponsors Bill to Remove Wolf Protections

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 18, 2017

CONTACT: Dr. Maureen Hackett, Howling For Wolves, 612.250.5915 or Leslie Rosedahl, LWRosedahl@locklaw.com, 651.353.1818.

Howling For Wolves responds to newly-proposed federal legislation removing the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List

(St. Paul, Minn.) – This week federal legislation (H.R. 424 and S.R. 164) was introduced and  co-sponsored by Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) that removes Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf in the Great Lakes region (which includes Minnesota) and places it under state regulation. This proposed legislation does not allow for legal challenges to the reissued rule.

Dr. Maureen Hackett, founder and president of Howling For Wolves, a Minnesota-based wolf advocacy organization, said in response:

“Howling For Wolves urges Congress to keep politics out of the Endangered Species Act and wolf regulations. Congress should support ethical, effective, nonlethal preventative strategies so communities and wolves can co-exist. We want to protect the wolf for future generations – not drive them into extinction with a wolf trophy hunt. Wolves are a keystone species that bring balance and habitat for many other species and our ecosystem.

In all states where wolves previously lost federal protections, hunting and trapping were immediately implemented and wolf poaching was unleashed and increased. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has said they will ‘pick up where they left off’ with a wolf hunting and trapping season if the wolf loses federal protections. State officials continue to disregard the damage that wolf-killing has on the population, the pack structure, and the essential genetic diversity of the gray wolf.

If you adore our lakes, rivers, and forests, then you adore the wolf. The wolf makes wild habitat a reality. ‘Not without the wolf’  - Nearly all wild species rely on the habitat made possible by the wolf.”

Currently, Minnesota wolves have federal protection as threatened which keeps them from being hunted. As a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act and the wolf is killed by government agents for livestock predation. This change protected status was reinstated December 19, 2014 in a federal court decision overturning a 2011 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to delist the Great Lakes wolves. Minnesota had three consecutive wolf hunting and trapping seasons immediately upon the wolf losing federal protections from 2012 thru 2014. After the first year following the first wolf hunting and trapping season, the wolf population decreased by 25 percent. It has remained down ever since. The population potentially suffered a massive decrease in their genetic diversity needed for their survival.

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Howling For Wolves is a Minnesota-based wolf advocacy organization that formed in 2012 to educate the public about the wild wolf to foster tolerance and to ensure the wolf’s long-term survival. Howling For Wolves opposes recreational wolf hunting and trapping and all wildlife snaring. We current support the continuation of federal protections for the wolf by the Endangered Species Act. www.HowlingForWolves.org.