Take Action to Save Endangered Mexican Gray Wolves!
This new version of the proposal for managing Mexican gray wolves ignores the best available science and tens of thousands of comments submitted urging greater protections and freedom to roam for these endangered animals. Read our Press Release with fellow conservation partners on the final EIS for the Mexican wolf rule change here.
Comments are due no later than December 27, 2014. Please submit comments today, telling the government that allowing more killing and risky captures of these wolves is unacceptable, and ask others to do the same.
Please include these points in your comments:
(If you personalize these, it will make your comments more effective. If you're short on time, you can just copy and paste them into the comment form here.)
* US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) should move forward with allowing new wolves to be released throughout the larger area proposed.The Mexican gray wolf is the most endangered mammal in the U.S. with only about 83 in the wild. Additional wolves must be released into the wild now to increase the genetic health of the species. Numerous wolves are in captive breeding facilities around the country, prepared for, and awaiting, release.
* USFWS should not allow more killing of critically endangered wolves. The proposal will push Mexican gray wolves towards extinction by allowing many more of them to be killed under all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with science or recovery. With fewer than 90 in the wild, every wolf is important. These native lobos need more protections, not less.
* Wolves need freedom from boundaries. Given room to roam, the wolves will establish themselves in suitable areas with adequate game. They will naturally avoid places with high densities of humans and low prey availability. USFWS must change the rules that do not allow wolves to establish new packs and populations in additional areas that are essential to their recovery.
* Additional populations of Mexican wolves north of I-40 are necessary to their recovery and genetic health, as is the ability for wolves to move between populations. Capturing and moving wolves because they roam beyond an artificial boundary is always a risky business that can result in death or trauma to the wolf.
* The USFWS should designate Mexican gray wolves as essential. By labeling all of the wild wolves as "nonessential" the USFWS ignores science and the reality of 16 years of experience with reintroducing wolves. The 83 wolves in the wild have up to 5 generations of experience in establishing packs and raising pups and are over 22% of all of the Mexican wolves in the world. The fifth generation wild lobos are not expendable and are essential to recovering this unique subspecies of wolf.
* The USFWS needs to quit stalling and complete a comprehensive recovery plan. USFWS admits that their 1982 recovery plan is not scientifically sound and does not meet current legal requirements – yet in its proposed rule USFWS continues to ignore the best available science and the recommendations of its own science recovery planning subgroup.
Submit your comments here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FWS_FRDOC_0001-1298