This is Great News for the Gray Wolves!

I was really glad to learn about this court ruling tonight (h/t to Chris at AmericaBlog.com). This is an issue I've been concerned about for quite some time,and have posted entries about them here, and here. Yet, in of all places, Montana, a judge has reinstated the Gray Wolf's endangered species protection in order to prevent public wolf hunts this fall. MSNBC has the details....

Here's the lede for this story:

BILLINGS, Mont. - A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy granted a preliminary injunction late Friday restoring the protections for the wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Molloy will eventually decide whether the injunction should be permanent.

The region has an estimated 2,000 gray wolves. They were removed from the endangered species list in March, following a decade-long restoration effort.

All we can hope for is that this judicial decision stands, because killing these wolves is just wrong. The very ancestors of our beloved dogs (and all their weirdnesses) are at stake here. I've known a lot of wolves and wolf-dog hybrids over the years, and despite some odd behaviors (overly shy and reserved attitudes) they are magnificent animals I'd be glad to see on a daily basis, if I could. Wolves have had a bad rep for far too long, and their near extinction (until restoration efforts in the '90s) gave me considerable reasons to despair for these noble animals.

In these days of scorched earth Republican policies, it's way past time that we work on reversing these reprehensible and callous affronts to our native species, and perhaps this judicial decision might be the opening salvo to putting the right priorities in scope again....

And one more reason that 'partisan me' might add is that voting for Barack Obama will go a long ways toward making sure that such decisions stand judicially. The alternative is far too horrifying to imagine....

A Headline I Was Glad to See Today ...

Just a quick update on a story I wrote about way back on 17 April in this post. Today, a lawsuit was filed by some 12 Environmental and Animal Rights groups to get Federal authorities to return the Gray Wolf to Endangered Species protection, after the government removed them from protected status back in February of this year. Good for them, and hopefully the Rocky Mountain Wolf packs as well! (Click on the headline to read the short update from USA Today.)

Now, I'm not a particularly litigious type ... in fact I tend to agree that all sorts of suits without much merit are filed every day, but this one I intend to follow closely as it proceeds (slowly, of course). The groups are also asking a judge to issue an injunction that would stop state management of the wolf populations in the Upper Rockies states. The net effect would be to halt the indiscriminate killing of Gray Wolves while this suit makes its way through the courts. That would buy the wolves some breathing space for now, but I'm sure we can expect a nasty battle to save them lies ahead. I'll plan to post periodic updates as I find out more, but if anyone runs into good links to more information about this, I'd appreciate you posting them in the comments section.

And while I'm at it, speaking of lawsuits without much merit, this headline also caught my eye tonight. Submitted, without further comment, as it pretty much speaks for itself ... 300-pound inmate complains Ark. jail doesn't feed him well.

This Is Just WRONG ...

I came across this article from USA Today this evening and it really got my hackles up in a big way. Wolves are being "gunned down" ... primarily in Wyoming where 13 of the recently killed 20 wolves lived. These fools actually allow sanctioned wolf hunting year round ... This is just wrong.

Apparently, a government ruling in February just decided that they should no long appear on the endangered species list.**

Here's the lead to give you a taste:

The killing of 20 wolves in the Rockies since the animals lost endangered status is an unprecedented death toll that must be stopped in court, environmentalists say.

"There's a great sense of urgency," says Michael Robinson, a wolf expert at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of several groups that plan to file a lawsuit this month. "The wolf population is being gunned down right now."

Now, go read the rest....

I should, by way of disclosure, say that I've been a defender of the Wolf for many years now, and have been fascinated by them since I was a child. Despite all those stereotypical childhood nightmares, wolves do not (or very rarely) attack humans. They are intelligent, elusive and shy. They are the progenitors of all modern dog breeds. They live in well-defined social structures, displaying an astounding degree of cooperation and attending to the community needs of the pack. I've often wondered if humans' fears of the wolf were founded, at least partially, on the fact that in our collective psyche, wolves subliminally function as a reflection of our own selves. They're just too much like us.

Well, why wouldn't they be? The practice of selective breeding of dogs dates back millennia, but the wolf (in whatever form it had in antiquity) is the prototypical ancestor of all the dog breeds currently in existence. Wolves became our partners, and inevitably, as humans do, we failed them. As much as we've bred most of the true wolf out of the common dog, there's still enough that remains ... fortunately for us. We dog lovers treasure the intelligent companionship and unconditional love of our dogs, but it's too easy to gloss over just how much the ancestor has been bred out of them. As one documentary I saw on National Geographic TV asserted, we've bred them down to be perpetual puppies, children as it were. And precisely in that way, we assert our superior dominance over them ... since we never really let the wolf mature, we're left with a mostly docile (and probably very affectionate) dog who is but a poorly realized hologram of its ancestor. A pale comparison, you might say.

My intent here is not to wring my hands and gnash my teeth at the state of the current dog (no matter which breed), and I've been the proud owner of some remarkable dogs over the years, most currently Queen Pepa (Approximately). I truly love dogs ... and their ancestors even more. We humans probably learned a great deal from the wolves back in the way way back days. But what have we given them in return for the Devil's Bargain they made with us? We've either bred them into creatures of our own design or driven them to the precipice of extinction, more than once.

Enough species are either now extinct or on the brink, just clinging to their ways ... Polar Bears are drowning, seals are losing their habitat in Alaska ... whales are beaching themselves ... the list goes on and on. I have to admit that wolves are a particular species of concern to me, however the larger, global picture has to be taken into consideration. The more we (or that inconvenient climate crisis) drive wildlife from their natural habitats, the more likely we are to eliminate them from the picture entirely. To my mind we cannot even begin to calculate the losses we will eventually maintain (as our own species, should it survive) as the consequence of doing nothing. Stopping the hunting of wolves in Wyoming would be a good start.

** I want to research this more and find out just who was behind this action, particularly because I suspect some possibly aggressive lobbying coming from the state of Wyoming. Hmmm........................