Please Support Alliance For The Wild Rockies & Friends Of The Clearwater

Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Clearwater are consulting with their attorneys about challenging the wolf delisting rider in court, on constitutional grounds.

Please click on the links below to visit their websites.  Show your support with generous donations.

Alliance For the Wild Rockies

Friends of the Clearwater

 They showed courage and conviction, standing firm for wolves while the other ten plaintiffs brokered a deal with USFWS.

Of course the “settlement”  by the 10 groups was ultimately rejected by Judge Molloy.

He stated in part:

“[The] District Court is still constrained by the “rule of law.” No matter how useful a course of conduct might be to achieve a certain end, no matter how beneficial or noble the end, the limit of power granted to the District Court must abide by the responsibilities that flow from past political decisions made by the Congress. The law cannot be ignored to accommodate a partial settlement. The rule of law does not afford the District Court the power to decide a legal issue but then at the behest of some of the litigants to reverse course and permit what the Congress has forbidden because some of those interested have sensibly, or for other reasons, decided to lay a dispute to rest.”

  But the victory was short-lived because the Senate allowed Jon Tester (D-MT) to slip a wolf delisting rider into a must-pass appropriations bill.  81 Senators voted  for the budget bill and in turn sold wolves down the river. They even allowed the language of the rider to be rewritten so it wouldn’t jeopardize Wyoming’s court case, in pursuit of delisting their wolves. The rider reads:

“Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this division, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without regard to any other provision of statute or regulation that applies to issuance of such rule. Such reissuance (including this section) shall not be subject to judicial review and shall not abrogate or otherwise have any effect on the Order and Judgment issued by the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming in Case Numbers 09-CV-118J and 09-CV-138J on November 18, 2010.”

There was literally no support for wolves in the Senate. The months of emailing, faxing and writing Congress were in vain. The most appalling part of  this sad story is the majority of Democrats voted for the wolf delisting budget bill. Only three Democrats voted against it. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, also voted no. The rest of the no votes were Republicans.

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Just to remind everyone:

Settlement Between 10 Environmental Groups and USFWS

http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=238576

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Groups lay out opposition to proposed wolf settlement

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_e5de98ff-de9a-5815-8739-b637416daa61.html

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Judge Blocks Deal Lifting Protections For Wolves

by The Associated Press

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/10/135287332/judge-blocks-deal-on-protections-for-wolves

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Endangered Wolves Sacrificed in Budget Deal

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-hurowitz/endangered-wolves-sacrifi_b_847673.html

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Afraid for Wolves

http://www.friendsofanimals.org/news/2011/april/afraid-for-wolves.html

Photo: Courtesy All About Wolves

Posted in: Wolf Wars, endangered species act

Tags: wolves in peril, wolf scapegoating, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Clearwater, political assault on the ESA