Howl Across America for Wolves! Washington DC Wolf Rally to fight for Endangered Species Act

Washington : DC : USA | Jun 04, 2011 at 7:31 AM PDT

By Cathy Taibbi

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In light of recent attempts by special interests to eradicate all wolves from the North American landscape, a new petition and proposal is circulating to grant American wolves full Federal protection permanently.

The petition, started on FaceBook and authored by Linda Carmac of Good Wolf, a wolf advocacy group aiming to restore protections for wolves and to fight anti-wolf hysteria with facts, seeks to redress the recent failures of the Endangered Species Act during the budget battle in the White House. The petition was created by the Alliance For The Wild Rockies, Inc., and is circulating on change.org.

It must be completed by August 12, in time for the upcoming Washington, DC Wolf Rally, "Howl Across America", at which time it will be handed to The White House and a copy given to the Capitol Building.

The body of the petition can be read, below:

"Recently congress voted to delist the gray wolves of the Northern Rocky Mountains from the Endangered Species Act and turn over wolf management to the states. This decision was NOT based on science, but rather on the demand of special interest groups. More recently, a Michigan congress woman, Candace Miller, proposed to delist ALL the wolves in America from federal protection and turn them over to the states.

In the past state management has proved to be disasterous for wolves, driven to the brink of extinction! This time promises to be no different as the states gear up with enthusiatic hunters and webpages anticipating arrowing wolves to death, luring them with scent and recorded callings, trapping them in steel traps and snarl traps, poisoning, and shooting. Many governors of these states are avid hunters and in the 'extreme' anti-wolf camp. Some sites even advising how 'not to kill the wolf instantly, but to let him suffer longer' . THEIR words!

We simply cannot turn our wolves over to the states. If ever science determines that the wolf is not an endangered species, these animals must continue to be managed by the federal government under a different category. Wolves are an iconic keystone predator, keeping herds healthy and ecological systems balanced. "

The petition can be viewed and signed, here.

Please make plans to attend Howl Across America in Washington, DC and show your support for our wild wolves as well as our support for a strong, revitalized Endangered Species Act.

For greater insight into the issues surrounding wolves in America please read this article in Earth Island Journal.

The petition can be viewed and signed, here.

Thank you - let's start howling for America's wolves!

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Photo: Good Wolf petition

Cathy Taibbi is based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America, and is an Anchor for Allvoices.

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Post a Comment Comments: 17

Posted By

RevAustinMiles | almost 2 years ago

Cathy, outstanding reporting. How can anyone with an ounce of humanity slaughter these beautiful animals, not just to kill them, but to instruct hunters HOW to shoot them so that they do not die instantly, but will suffer longer. (!) This is outragesous. Readers, do more than just READ these horrible accounts, ACT. This must stop. It is easy to get disgusted over the entire human race. This is unacceptable, barbaric and MUST be stopped. Thank you Cathy.
Rev. Austin Miles

Reply By

Cathy Taibbi | almost 2 years ago

Thank you so much, RevAustinMiles, for your supportive comment! You're right- it's time to get active and really fight for our wildlife. A friend just emailed me about the bison situation - there are barely ANY genetically pure Bison left on our rangeland, yet the National Parks are culling them and allowing them to be harassed and slaughtered.

Our stewardship of our natural world is at a crossroads and all those who love and cherish the Earth and all the precious life on it - these irreplaceable gifts - MUST rally now to preserve them.

Thank you for caring and helping spread the word!

Posted By

Abdel Fattah Hussein | almost 2 years ago

It is informative , thank you for sharing Rated up

Posted By

raazia assad | almost 2 years ago

nice sharing
and thanks for ur report
rated up

Posted By

Dava Castillo | almost 2 years ago

Great report Cathy as always. Rated up and tweeted and facebook.

Reply By

Cathy Taibbi | almost 2 years ago

Thank you, Dava - and thank you, especially, for the wolves!

Posted By

skooter | almost 2 years ago

Wolves and other living creatures in this planet has the right to life, including humans. Thanks and rated up!

Posted By

Nina Rai | almost 2 years ago

Loves animals. Support this cause of
saving the wolves. Thanks for sharing
this rept Cathy.

Posted By

LindaMC | almost 2 years ago

Great article Cathy! Very informative, articulate and compassionate. Network news has literally ignored the delisting of wolves as a budget cut;to be paid by the blood of wolves. On August 9th, in the 11th hour, to secure a democratic majority in the senate by assuring John Tester's seat, the wolves were thrown under the bus. Tester's constituency is largely made up of ranchers and hunters. As you say, none of this was based on science, but more about political agendas and special interest groups. It is my conclusion that ranchers, who by the way suffer LESS THAN 1% of cattle/sheep losses combined per year by wolves, just want to fell trees, and have their cash cows graze where ever they please; hunters do not welcome the competition from apex predators for elk and other wild prey. Hunting sites are constantly comisserating about the false notion that wolves will eradicate all herds, when just the opposite is true. Wolves run the heads until the sick, weak and old fall behind; human hunters take the strongest for the trophy walls. We all know that when an assigned apex predator is removed from a region, the balance goes haywire! Pennsylvania, my home state, saw its last free wolf over 200 years ago and despite EXTREME hunting, we are over run with whitetail deer who cause many fatal car accidents per year. Wolves are of no threat to humans, I wish we could say the same in return.

Reply By

Cathy Taibbi | almost 2 years ago

Thank you, Linda - and kudos to you for caring so much and helping defend our wolves. The more real, scientific information that we can get out there to the public, to counter the fear and outright lies of those that would see wolves eliminated from the planet, the more of a difference we can make.

If you check out some of my previous stories on wolves you'll find links to some great little videos about how important wolves are to the Earth - please feel free to share those stories as well. Just let me know if you'd like the links to read or to post on your FaceBook page, or just browse the stories under my profile -

- Take care, and keep on howling for the wolves!

Posted By

Adebanjos | almost 2 years ago

Nicely and wonderful written, well done job rated up!

Posted By

Dorothy Marie Kucera | over 1 year ago

I'd like to see a straight listing of all of the "benefits" of letting wolves expand in population without any control. I see one writer's comment above about white tail deer running wild in Pennsylvania and they do cause highway accidents. I remember when one hit my dad's car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike years ago. That is not good but at least an overpopulation of deer provide great venison meat. No one eats wolf meat, do they?

Animals are getting out of the woods and mountains into many city areas now; we have had mountain lions here in the Plains...in Omaha, Nebraska!! We are ten hours away from the mountains of Colorado! There are other factors driving wild animals into civilized housing areas. I do not understand all of it but I think we need to be careful to not give "carte blanche" to any animal group.

Wouldn't totally avoiding the wolves lead to the same "out of balance" situation in nature with too many of them competing with one another, causing yet another major crisis without enough food?

I grew up reading Albert Terhune's stories about how vicious wolves were when attacking dogs and animals on ranches. Wolves may not be causing major problems now for ranchers but at what point in their population explosion would it become a crisis issue for people and livestock?

If we have to have one group of animals overpopulated, at least deers are not attacking viciously and they do provide good meat for eating.

Don't misunderstand; I like balance in nature's wildlife, also and I especially agree with above comments about how horrendous is the practice of letting wolves suffer.

Reply By

Cathy Taibbi | over 1 year ago

Dorothy, humans are encroaching further and further into the last remaining wildernesses and even marginal habitat areas and so of course we will have more conflicts. The first thing we have to do is give wildlife room to live.

But this is not 'all about us' - we are overwhelming a previously balanced world and really have yet to understand how everything works.

Top tier predators on land and in the sea are VITAL - CRUCIAL to keep the planet running. Look at what we've learned since reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone (where forests and smaller ecosystems were inexplicably disappearing after the wolves were removed.) It turns out wolves keep the herds on the move, for instance, which means elk aren't able to eat all the aspen saplings to the ground - when the wolves came back so did the forests and all the creatures that relied on them.

More, wolves ruthlessly remove the old, sick, weak and young - sounds cruel but think of it this way - the ones that live are the most vital, strongest, healthiest. That's the way it's been for EONS.

People are just not wise enough to "manage" all the life on Earth. In fact if you are a Christian and read that God gave man 'dominion over the animals', the actual translation of the word in the original texts was closer to 'Respect and Cooperation'.

That's a far cry from what people are doing now - having begun one of the greatest mass extinctions in the planet's history.

Please feel free to ask more questions - but always, think Interconnectedness and about just how young Humans actually are.

Would you trust your 2 yr old to make decisions in government? That's like what people are doing right now with our PLANET - trying to make irrevocable decisions on which SPECIES survive and which don't - without really having an idea of the long-term ramifications of our short-sited actions.

. . . Lord help us. . . .

Posted By

Abdel Fattah Hussein | over 1 year ago

very informative thank you for sharing

Posted By

LindaMC | over 1 year ago

To Dorothy Marie:

First, we are not saying that there needs to be NO wolf 'management' - but there is NON-LETHAL wolf management and the state of Oregon has adopted this policy and practice. Of course, with human expansion and development, the true prarie days of allowing mother nature to do all the balancing, are gone.
I do assure you though that we need wolves and all apex predators if we are to enjoy a healthy, balanced environment. When the wolves were removed from Yellowstone, that was a living laboratory of how everything went haywire! Yellowstone was dying - the wolves had to be re-introduced at the taxpayor's dime to the tune of 30 million dollars! There was overgrowth of some foilage and disappearance of other foilage, streams were drying up, beavers, song birds, and frogs wer leaving; stinking, rotting carcasses of dead elk, moose and oher prey animals dying from natural causes were everywhere....no predators! The presence of wolves and their predation practices feeds the crows, the coyotes, the hawks; nourishes the soil; keeps the herds healthy b/c the wolves run the herds until the sick, weak, and old fall behind - hunters take the best for their trophy walls, leaving the sick to breed.

Posted By

Cathy Taibbi | over 1 year ago

Dorothy, more info for you -about how red wolves comeback in NC helps quail and more - http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/08/13/1409507/red-wolf-comeback-in-nc-helps.html -

Posted By

SofiaAmbrosia | over 1 year ago

ever read "Women Who Run With Wolves?" A fascinating read... rated up!

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