Save Oregon’s Struggling Wolf Population: automatic, sample letter

From Center for Biological Diversity

In 2008 wolves established the first Oregon wolf pack in more than 60 years with formation of the Imnaha pack. Since then two other packs have established.

But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Oregon’s wolves. In response to pressure from the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has been aggressively responding to a small number of livestock depredations by killing members of Oregon’s very small wolf population, including two wolves earlier this year. In part because of these killings, Oregon’s wolf population has swiftly dropped from 21 to just 14 wolves.

Now that the Center and allies have gotten a temporary stay on further killings of wolves, it’s time for the state to take a step back and reevaluate its approach to wolf management. Oregon’s wolf population is too small to sustain killings in response to depredations. Instead, more work needs to be done to help ranchers change their practices and reduce wolf-cattle conflicts.

In the rare cases where those practices are not effective, Oregon has a compensation program for livestock losses, which is not the case for loss of livestock to other predators or disease, both of which result in orders of magnitude more loss.


If you live in Oregon, please click and sign HERE

If you live outside Oregon, please take action as follows:

1. Please click on Governor Kitzhaber’s site

2. Enter your contact information

3. Use the following letter for your comments, or compose your own

Sample Text

Subject Selection: Animals

Subject Text: Please Chart a New Course for Wolf Management

Dear Governor Kitzhaber:

I was greatly relieved to see that a stay was issued stopping the killing of two wolves from the Imnaha pack by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

It is my sincere hope that you will use this stay as an opportunity to take a different tack in wolf management — one that emphasizes nonlethal measures to reduce wolf-livestock conflicts in combination with Oregon’s already extant compensation program.

With only 14 wolves in Oregon, I do not believe that these two wolves should be killed, nor should lethal control be a primary means for addressing this problem.

Please direct the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to rescind its kill order for these two wolves and refrain from issuing future kill orders.

Everyone: You can also contact Governor Kitzhaber’s office by phone at (503) 378-4582 or fax at (503) 378-6827.  Two free faxes per day can be sent very easily from HERE.



See More:

• Animal Wrongs
• What Can I Do?

Our brothers howl
In their dwindling hills
As their lives, also
Dwindle
Due to man’s
Ill will
Please protect our
Wolf packs
So their numbers
Come back

Karen Lyons Kalmenson