Lost in campaign politics leading up to re-election is the disturbing news that the Obama administration has declared war on Wyoming's wolves.
Already, Idaho and Montana have removed protections, but Wyoming was the last holdout because of their extreme anti-wolf plans. However, Ken Salazar (a hack of a SOI appointed by Obama and a corporate rancher who loathes endangered species) has caved in, and now in 80% of Wyoming, the rare wolves can be shot on sight. No bag limits. No hunting rules.
See one, shoot it.
This is indeed disturbing policy coming form a supposed Democratic administration. There's no science involved here.
Ken Salazar has struck again.
At the peak of their recovery, wolves pushed to 1700 animals across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. (some 350,000 square miles). To give you a mental image of what 1700 wolves across 350,000 square miles looks like, I offer you Cook County (home of Chicago) which is 945 square miles, and has five million people... Now wolves will be cut down in all three states to under 500, with no outside watchdog to make sure "the books aren't cooked".
In a way, history is repeating itself. Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming once wiped out wolves proving they were not responsible enough to manage them. Now they are proving it again as they play shell games to keep the wolves from dropping below meager minimum population numbers.
As you can see, the wolf hysteria has become completely overblown, and now the animals stands for more than just a wolf -- it stands for certain individual's unhappiness, a symbol of liberal tree hugger intervention, and a symbol of big government (nevermind that ranching subsidies are one of the biggest budget busters in D.C.)
What can you do? Contact the Obama administration and tell them you expect a Democratic president to appoint a Democratic Secretary of the Interior (a position more powerful than any governor, and one that oversees national parks, BLM, and our wildlife). Tell the Obama administration that shooting wolves on sight, just because, is a shameful way to operate as a Democrat, a party where we pride on solving problems with our minds rather than bullets. Tell them Ken Salazar is a hack, and anti-endangered species, and that you expect a Secretary of the Interior that is more friendly towards science.
Lastly, tell them to keep wolves protected in Wyoming, period. An 80% kill on sight zone is no acceptable.
You can read more here (note the hostile, angry reactions by hunters and ranchers in the comments...this hysteria is fueling these awful policies, and Salazar, as a former rancher, buys right into it):
http://billingsgazette.com/...
This bizarre policy is simply so far off the grid one has to wonder why the Obama administration would ever approve of it. Does Obama even know? Many Bush cronies still populate the federal agencies that oversee our land, air, and water. When GWB took over, he expunged Democrats from those agencies. Obama has never done that. All he had to do was appoint a progressive SOI, but he did not,and now all of us are paying the price....especially a wolf that just happens to be trotting along a forest road.
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