by Kieran Suckling / Center for Biological Diversity
After weeks of intense pressure from the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just admitted to excluding key wolf experts from the scientific analysis of its infamous, nationwide wolf-delisting plan. The Service has dissolved its hand-picked panel and turned over the entire review process to an independent research institute. Now the nation’s top wolf scientists –once improperly disqualified for questioning the Service’s proposal to delist wolves — will be reconsidered as candidates for the review panel.
This is a victory in our fight to keep federal protections for gray wolves — but another battle is raging in the northern Rockies and Great Lakes. The wolf-killing season is starting, and hunters and trappers are lining up by the thousands.
In Montana 6,000 people just paid $19 to kill a wolf. Selling cheap $19 wolf tags to 6,000 people is an atrocity, because Montana only has 625 wolves left after last year’s killing season. Not satisfied with the massacre, the state has lined up 10 times as many rifles as there are wolves to finish the job
