For Immediate Release
Dustin Rhodes, Email, Phone: (202) 906-0210
Contact: Edita Birnkrant, Email, Phone: (917) 940-2725
Helena, MT-Montana’s state-sponsored wolf-killing scheme began on September 3, 2011, with the goal of killing 220 wolves-even though Montana doesn’t know how many wolves live in the state. Friends of Animals (FoA), Predator Defense, members of Howl Across America and wolf advocates are pushing back.
“We’re showing up at the Montana State Capital Building to confront Gov. Schweitzer on the state’s hellish wolf slaughter which has meant more than 50 wolves died so far in Montana and Idaho,” says Friends of Animals’ Washington, D.C. Correspondent, Dustin Rhodes.
“Montana’s know-nothing eradication scheme for wolves is based on irrational fear and deceit,” says Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals.
Hundreds of wolves will be killed in Montana this winter, jeopardizing their very existence, unless a federal appeals court overturns a congressional maneuver orchestrated by Sen. John Tester of Montana to remove the wolves from the federal Endangered Species Act. Friends of Animals filed a brief as friend-of-the-court in the Ninth Circuit in support of the wolves’ re-listing, and the issue will be argued in federal appeals court on November 8, 2011.
“Montana clearly favors wolf-hating ranchers and hunters over wolves and their defenders,” Feral says.
Montana resident and wolf biologist Jay S. Mallonee has written extensively on wolves and the lack of data that Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks uses to justify killing them.
In 2009, 97 cattle were lost to wolves out of 2.6 million in Montana-.02% of the state’s cattle. Mallonee’s studies debunk the claim that wolves significantly affect the elk that hunters covet. (Jay S. Mallonee’s research can be viewed at www.wolfandwildlifestudies.com.)
The state agency is, Mallonee adds, “either manipulating the data or they are completely incompetent.”
“Hunting wolves caters to hatred and bigotry, because there is no real justification for killing these animals,” Mallonee says.
A tight-knit group of bureaucrats concocting numbers to facilitate wolf-hunting must be stopped, FoA says.
Montana includes two major national parks, Glacier and Yellowstone, and touts its historical, cultural, natural and water-based recreational sites. “Until Montana adopts sane policies, we’re asking people around the world to stay out of them. Wolves don’t belong to Montana or any other state. They belong to themselves and to the planet,” Rhodes says.
What: Press Conference and Rally
When: Friday, October 14th, 2011; 12pm-2pm
Where: Montana State Capital Building, 1301 EAST 6TH AVENUE, Helena, Montana 59620-0801