Shut down Wolf-Killing Facebook Sites

The federal wolf-killing machine is cranking up again: The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services plans to send gunners in helicopters to shoot wolves dead from the sky in Idaho.

This is happening as the number of wolves gunned down, trapped and poisoned since 2011 alone surpasses 4,000 dead -- more than half of them in the state of Idaho alone.

Anti-wolf militants have made it clear that they won't stop until nearly every wolf in our country is gone. State legislatures spend nearly half a million dollars every year to kill wolves. This is money that can go toward vital state programs like education. For example, the Idaho Legislature is right now budgeting $400,000 to kill wolves thisl year. Last year similar funding was used by the state to kill 72 wolves at an estimated cost of more than $7,000 per animal -- and that's on top of the 250-plus killed by private hunters during the 2014-2015 season. The wolf haters are willing to spend a publicly funded fortune to exterminate this intelligent, social species.

Grey wolves in California had been eradicated in California in the 1920’s. The last wolf in Oregon was shot in the 1940s, and the state was void of wolves until 2008, when a single pack was established in northeastern Oregon. Now wolves are almost making a comeback there -- but they had only begun, before protections were stripped in November, 2015. In Idaho, Wyoming and Montana groups like the ironically named “Idaho for Wildlife” or “"The Only Good Wolf is a Dead Wolf," sponsor cruel, annual wolf-killing contests. Imagine hundreds of blood-thirsty people with guns trying to kill as many animals as possible to win prizes.

The decades of hard work from environmentalists, biologists, and conservationists to re-introduce wolves to their native habitats and recover are being erased by greedy politicians who are wholly owned by industry including ranchers’ powerful lobbies: BIG AGRICULTURE looking to make a buck no matter the depravity, corruption, animal suffering, habitat destruction, or environmental devastation.

We need to defeat wolf-killing proposals from the Great Lakes to the Pacific. We need to send a message to wolf haters in every single state of our great nation that this wanton killing and brutality against earth’s predators WILL NO LONGER BE TOLERATED. This is OUR planet and these beautiful animals are OUR country’s treasures. We must make every effort to ensure wolves and other carnivores are afforded the respect they deserve as key parts of healthy thriving ecosystems across the West.

In this spirit, I am asking you to please help me to shut down every single site on Facebook that connects these heartless, cruel and malicious anti-wolf zealots. Help me shut down the platform that allows them to display and brag about their kills, sharing photos of the bloody carcasses of their victims -- egging each other on to "smoke a pack a day." Please help me ensure that wolves do NOT get wiped out for the second time in a century in our great nation. Please sign my petition to protect wolves in the wild.

4,000 dead wolves is 4,000 too many.