WildEarth GUARDIANS VICTORY
Ensuring Lobos Will Roam their Southwestern Homelands
April 2, 2018
Last week we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the return of Mexican wolves to the wilds of Arizona and New Mexico. This week we celebrate the most significant legal victory for lobos in years. We couldn’t have done it without you.
In 2013, the federal government began a process to change how wolves, including Mexican wolves, were managed. We called on you to speak out against weakening protections and you answered: you signed petitions, sent comments, came to rallies and testified at hearings. Together, we laid the groundwork for a lawsuit challenging the government’s flawed plan that capped the Mexican wolf population at less than half what leading scientists say is necessary for recovery, limited where Mexican wolves can roam, liberalized trapping and killing wolves at the behest of the livestock industry and labeled the wolves “non-essential” to the species’ survival in the wild, a designation that allows weak protections.
Yesterday a federal judge agreed with us and criticized the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for ignoring scientists who sounded the alarm. Now the Service must create management guidelines that do not merely keep lobos hovering on the brink, but will truly recover this critically imperiled species. At just 114 wolves in the wild, the need is urgent.
Today we celebrate. Tomorrow we go back to work.
http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13424&news_iv_ctrl=1681#.WsP0LIjwY2y