Animal Wellness Launches Ad Campaign Urging the President to Direct Interior Dept. Not to Strip Protections for Wolves

The Interior Dept has proposed to de-list wolves across the West and Midwest – an administrative act that would trigger killing of more than 1,000 wolves a year

WASHINGTON, DC, USA, June 25, 2019 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Today, Animal Wellness Action, the Animal Wellness Foundation, and the Center for a Humane Economy released a full-page ad in today’s print edition of The New York Times, calling on President Trump to show "mercy for wolves" and prevent a half dozen states from opening trophy hunting and trapping seasons by maintaining their status as “threatened” or “endangered” across much of their range in the contiguous states.

“Since 1900, it’s been a one-sided war between humans and wolves,” said Leslie Alexander, co-author of the published letter to President Trump and the financial supporter of today’s advertisement. “Humans have killed more than 100,000 wolves, and healthy wolves have not killed a single person. “

“We’ve got to stop the hysteria and hating and begin to understand that wolves bring a range of benefits to the regions they inhabit,” added Wayne Pacelle, co-author of the letter and founder of Animal Wellness Action. “It’s too soon and too risky to unleash trophy hunters and trappers to kill them, and it’s self-defeating because wolves, through their natural behavior, improve the health of ecosystems, reduce crop and timber losses by controlling prey populations, reduce the frequency of deer-auto collisions, and act as a bulwark against the spread of wildlife diseases."

Gray wolves, virtually eradicated from the lower 48 states in the latter part of the 19th century and early part of 20th, have had a slow walk back from near extirpation. For decades, federal, state, and local governments offered bounties on wolves and also executed their own government-sponsored predator-killing operations – a slaughter that stands alongside the massacre of bison as among the most wanton chapters in the history of American wildlife management.

With wolves holding on only in the northern tier Minnesota by the early 1970s, the federal government established protections for gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act, and in the decades since, they have only slowly increased in number and reclaimed a fraction of their original range. Just more than 5,000 wolves survive in the contiguous states, and they face a range of threats, including poaching, mistaken identify killing, habitat loss and fragmentation, disease, intra-specific aggression, and other threats.

"Wolves feel pain just like dogs do," noted Mr. Alexander. "Killing these family-oriented animals just for trophies or snaring them or catching them in a steel-jawed leghold trap is deeply disturbing to me and so many other animal lovers."

Citizens can go to the Animal Wellness Action website at www.animalwellnessaction.org/wolves and send a letter to President Trump and to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

The ad campaign will continue at least until the public comment period on the wolf de-listing proposal ends on July 15th.

The Animal Wellness Foundation (Foundation) is a Los Angeles-based private charitable organization with a mission of helping animals by making veterinary care available to everyone with a pet, regardless of economic ability. We organize rescue efforts and medical services for dogs and cats in need and help homeless pets find a loving caregiver. We are advocates for getting veterinarians to the front lines of the animal welfare movement; promoting responsible pet ownership; and vaccinating animals against infectious diseases such as distemper. We also support policies that prevent animal cruelty and that alleviate suffering. We believe helping animals helps us all.

Animal Wellness Action (Action) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(4) organization with a mission of helping animals by promoting legal standards forbidding cruelty. We champion causes that alleviate the suffering of companion animals, farm animals, and wildlife. We advocate for policies to stop dogfighting and cockfighting and other forms of malicious cruelty and to confront factory farming and other systemic forms of animal exploitation. To prevent cruelty, we promote enacting good public policies and we work to enforce those policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. We believe helping animals helps us all.

Marty Irby
ANIMAL WELLNESS ACTION
+1 202-821-5686
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