The California Fish and Wildlife Commission is considering new regulations to ban nighttime hunting and lethal trapping in California’s gray wolf habitat. These regulations are an essential step in establishing a strong wolf recovery and management plan for California.

Mistaken killings of returning gray wolves pose a very real threat to the Shasta pack family and gray wolf recovery in California overall. Documented cases throughout the United States show that wolves are frequently killed by hunters targeting coyotes during night hunts and by lethal traps and snares set for coyotes and other animals.
While wolf recovery and management in California will be a long-term effort involving many stakeholders, the most immediate risks to the species can be addressed right now. The commission’s adoption of a ban against nighttime hunting and lethal trapping in wolf habitat would greatly reduce the likelihood of Endangered Species Act violations caused by mistaken killings.
~Erin  Hauge, Sacramenta, California 

Source

Photograph: A trail camera shot dated Aug. 9, 2015, shows five gray wolf pups in Northern California. (Credit: CDFW)


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Rachel Tilseth's avatar

By Rachel Tilseth

I am a Menomonie, Wisconsin-based environmental writer, filmmaker, and owner of Wolves of Douglas County WI Films & Media. My work explores the relationships between humans, wildlife, and local ecosystems, focusing on threats to vulnerable habitats. Through independent, grassroots media, I advocate for sustainable coexistence with apex predators and educate the public on ecological economics. My award-winning short film, People & Wolves: A Story of Coexistence, won Best Documentary Short at the Red Cedar Film Festival and features insights from Dr. Jane Goodall, Ojibwa tribal members, hunters, and biologists.

2 thoughts on “Letter to the Editor: Regulations needed to aide gray wolves recovery in California.”
  1. Please do all in your power to help save our wolves and coyotees. Especially night hunting is so horrible – these macho hunters with their night goggles are on a death march to eliminate all of our wolves and coyotees – – these people are evil and there is no valid excuse for killing the wolves who will be extinct very soon at the rate the hunters are killing them and bullying legislators into making laws enabling them to kill more freely – we need to ban all killing of wolves and especially night killing which takes away any chance they have. The terrible hunters who use dogs are the worst – the dogs find and rip the wolves apart while waiting for their humans to come and finish the job – please have a heart and stop killing our precious wolves – once gone – they are gone forever! As for trapping – that is so barbaric – the wolves suffer so terribly that most of them will chew their legs off to try to get out of the trap – it is evil, inhuman and wrong on every count! Anyone who has a heart would never trap an animal – many family dogs and cats also get caught and die in these traps that are hidden under leaves – it is sneaky and wrong.

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