This has to stop.
Yellowstone National Park’s best-known wolf, beloved by many tourists and valued by scientists who tracked its movements, was shot and killed on Thursday outside the park’s boundaries, Wyoming wildlife officials reported.
Read the heartbreaking
New York Times article. Unfortunately it's not an isolated incident, it's just the latest of many such, fruit of a policy that loosened the protection of wolf packs. Now they're doing so much better, so yay, let's shoot some!
Scientists and tourists alike are appalled. After all the great work to bring wolf populations back from near extinction, now we let creeps with guns pick them off when they cross an invisible park boundary. Why are we doing this? To please who, exactly?
What's next, open season on dogs? Because, you know, they're not in danger of extinction, they're actually pretty well protected, so isn't it time we 'balanced' that by killing some?
The mind cringes at the behavior we sanction as a society. Not just guns, but what people actually want to do with them. When you think about the mind-set of someone who would shoot a wolf, the most intelligent and social of canines, it reminds you of what our species is capable of, and all its holocausts.