Republicans in Congress including Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin continue to threaten the rights of wolves to exist., introducing yet another pathetic legislative effort to remove the gray wolf in Wisconsin and most other states from protections of the federal Endangered Species Act.

Called the “Pet and Livestock Protection Act,” HR 845 would delist the wolf and ensure the action is not subject to judicial review.

That’s why we are asking supporters to contact their members of Congress and tell them to oppose HR 845. You can find your US senators and reps here: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member. 

If successful, HR 845 would allow state management authority for wolves, including lethal control through hunting and trapping seasons and removal efforts by U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. In a statement, Tiffany said the legislation would “restore management to those who understand local needs best—state wildlife officials—and ensure that out-of-state judges can no longer dictate how Wisconsin manages its wolf population.”

Clearly Tiffany is in bed with ranchers, hunters and trappers, and that’s why we must torpedo the bill and protect wolves. 

The late Alaska wolf biologist Gordon Haber, who Friends of Animals sponsored for 17 years, understood wolves as emotionally rich and who form complex societies. His year-round wolf observations in Denali National Park   led him to choose “family” when describing a group of wolves, rather than “pack.” Haber considered the latter a misleading and pejorative term that feeds the simplistic and inaccurate stereotype of wolves as vicious “killing machines.”

In his seminal 1996 article that appeared in the prestigious Conservation Biology journal, he confirmed that “high intelligence, expressiveness and unusual emotional depth enable wolves to maintain sophisticated social bonds,” adding that this extraordinary sentience provides an ethical reason for not allowing them to be persecuted with mass killings.

“To treat them otherwise is wrong,” stated Haber, who had decades of experience studying wolves in Alaska, including conducting several scientific studies that challenged the state’s wildlife agency, which advanced wolf control.

 The wolf has see-sawed between ESA protections and state management in recent decades, including delistings in 2012 during the administration of Pres. Barack Obama and 2020 under Pres. Donald Trump.

The most recent chapter of federal protection stems from a February 2022 decision by Judge Jeffrey White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. White ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to show wolf populations could be sustained in the Midwest and portions of the West without ESA protections and the agency’s “analysis relied on two core wolf populations to delist wolves nationally and failed to provide a reasonable interpretation of the ‘significant portion of its range’ standard.”

The ruling marked the fourth time since 2003 wolves in Wisconsin have been placed back under federal ESA protections. In the last decade, Wisconsin had state authority over the species from 2012-14 and January 2021 to Feb. 2022.