Devils Tower National Monument

“Hunters Have Killed More than 180 Wolves in the Northern Rockies
Without Federal Protection, Bloodbath is Underway

A bloodbath is underway in the northern Rocky Mountains as hunters there relentlessly target wolf packs in the region.

In April, Congress removed gray wolves in the northern Rockies from Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection. Since then, Idaho and Montana have sold nearly 37,000 wolf tags for fall hunts. As of November 11, some 114 wolves had been shot in Idaho, and 67 in Montana. Idaho plans to continue hunting through the winter of 2012, and will allow the state’s estimated 700 to 1,000 wolves to be reduced to no more than 150. If hunters and trappers fail to destroy enough, state officials promise to launch airborne search and destroy operations. Montana officials recently extended wolf season from the end of December to January 31, 2012 in hopes of killing 220 of their estimated 556 to 645 wolves. In Wyoming, Governor Matt Mead recently signed an agreement with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that will protect a remnant population of 100 to 150 to survive near Yellowstone National Park, but allow wolves to be classified as vermin and shot-on-sight in 80 percent of the state; hunts could begin there next spring.

The recent anti-wolf campaign represents an extraordinary cultural and political victory by the far-right wing in the Rocky Mountains. A loose coalition of some ranchers, hunters, and anti-government zealots demonized the gray wolves reintroduced to Montana and Idaho from Canada in the mid 1990s by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They cast the animals as huge, aggressive, disease-ridden monsters bent on ravaging livestock, elk, deer, and even people. Wolves became symbolic representations of the hated federal government (see my story, “Cry, Wolf” in the Summer 2011 issue of EIJ ). In time, both the mainstream Republican and Democratic Parties came to accept this vision of demonic wolves invading from Canada.    

In April, 2011, Senator John Tester, Democrat of Montana, facing a tough 2012 reelection challenge from Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg, led a campaign among fellow Democrats to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act using a federal budget bill rider, while Idaho’s Congressman Mike Simpson did the same among House Republicans. The rider passed with little dissent, marking the first time a species has been removed from the protections of the Endangered Species Act by Congress.”

Read the rest at Center for Biological Diversity

Speaking truth to power is dangerous business. An artist and the University of Wyoming are being threatened by coal companies and state legislatures for this art installation. askjerves.tumblr.com points to this extraordinary piece located on the University of Wyoming campus. Big coal contributes millions to the University, and republican law makers have made veiled threats to the school to pull funding.

Both the Guardian and the New York Times picked up the story. Salient bit: 

But as Drury charts on his blog, his comment on the connections between that calamity and coal was too close to home. By day three of construction, the mining industry was accusing the university of ingratitude towards one of its main benefactors – in what some have seen as a veiled threat to cut funding.

“They get millions of dollars in royalties from oil, gas and coal to run the university, and then they put up a monument attacking me, demonising the industry,” Marion Loomis, the director of the Wyoming Mining Association, told the Casper Star-Tribune. “I understand academic freedom, and we’re very supportive of it, but it’s still disappointing.”

Then two Republican members of the Wyoming state legislature joined in, calling the work an insult to coal. The subject of university funding also came up.

“While I would never tinker with the University of Wyoming budget – I’m a great supporter of the University of Wyoming – every now and then, you have to use these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University of Wyoming about where their paychecks come from,” Tom Lubnau, one of the state legislators, told the Gillette News-Record.

The university said it was standing by Drury’s work, although it was not necessarily endorsing his message.

Click here for more photos and background

Reblogged from: askjerves.tumblr.com

Me, I really like Chris Drury’s Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around installation on the University of Wyoming campus. Lawmakers in the coal-packed state, not so much. 

Breaking: Wolves Lose Federal Protection in Wyoming ›

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