What you can do if you oppose Utah state senator Allen Christensen wolf killing bill?
Wolves urgently need your help. Please send the following alert to as many people as you can. Use your organization’s email list if you can! Do it right away, then act on it yourself! The organization Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has a bill before the Utah legislature that would require the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to prevent wolf packs from becoming established in the Utah portion of the Rocky Mountain gray wolf recovery area. This part of the recovery area is where dispersing wolves from the Yellowstone country have been entering Utah, some of them traveling on to Colorado. If this bill passes, any wolves entering Utah in this area will be subject to capture and return or death. This egregious bill, identified as S.B. 36 first substitute, would supplant the Utah Wolf Management Plan – a plan which would at least tolerate up to two breeding pairs producing at least two surviving offspring for two consecutive years. I know, this plan is really lame, but it is better than what the bill would require. Furthermore, it was created through a public process that began with and ended with the Utah legislature – a process that involved 13 representatives of a diverse group of stakeholders, including ranchers and sportsmen, working for a year and a half. Even then, the ranching and hunting interests on the working group violated the mutually agreed-upon protocols in order to ensure that the resulting plan is really weak. Not satisfied with that, now they want to lord over the rest of us to ensure that there are never any wild wolves in Utah. At bottom this is a moral issue: We must stand up for wolves and wild nature and for ourselves. Here’s what you can do, but please do it quickly as this bill is on a fast track – do it NOW if you can: If you are a Utah resident, go to the following web-site and click on ‘Senate’ and ‘House’ to find your senator and your representative, then contact each and let him or her know in no ambiguous terms that you want this bill to fail. This will be particularly important for those of you who live in the Republican-dominated rural parts of the state: http://www.le.state.ut.us/ If you live outside Utah and you want to exert influence on this, you might contact the Utah Office of Tourism and express your displeasure over this bill and tell them that, if it passes, it will make you less interested in vacationing and recreating in Utah: http://travel.utah.gov/contactus.html If you would like to be added to the Utah Wolf Forum list serve to receive periodic updates on this and other wolf-related issues, contact lynx@xmission.com and state your request. It is our policy that you also briefly state your reason.
Sincerely, Kirk Robinson, PhD, Director of Western Wildlife Conservancy Allison Jones, M.S., Conservation biologist with Wild Utah Project
*Thanks to “Howling for Justice” for providing this information. (http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/utah-senator-to-wolves-do-not-enter-utah-on-pain-of-death-alert-take-action/)
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