Demand that Deb Harland, the Interior Secretary, issue an emergency relisting of the gray wolf on the Federal threatened and endangered species list.

A slaughter of wolves is underway in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming that has no precedent in the past 100 years.

Hunters in Idaho can shoot or trap as many as they like year-round on private land. They can lure wolves within gun range by putting out bait, run them down to exhaustion using A.T.V.s and snowmobiles and stalk them after dark using night vision technology.

Baiting and night hunting are also allowed on private land in Montana, where an individual can kill up to 20 wolves a year by hunting and trapping them. Both states allow bounty payments on dead wolves, which incentivize the bloodshed. In Wyoming, there is no limit on the number that can be killed across 85 percent of the state.
The methods allowed in these states are utterly at odds with the principles of ethical hunting as laid out by the Boone and Crockett Club, a hunting and conservation group. That approach is to pursue game animals in a way that “does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage.”

Ranchers whose livelihoods the state legislators cite as endangered by wolves are now complaining that elk are eating too much of their grass and raiding their haystacks — too many elk, in the middle of wolf country! The hunting seasons for elk actually are being extended.

The methods allowed in these states are utterly at odds with the principles of ethical hunting as laid out by the Boone and Crockett Club, a hunting and conservation group. That approach is to pursue game animals in a way that “does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage.”

Ranchers whose livelihoods the state legislators cite as endangered by wolves are now complaining that elk are eating too much of their grass and raiding their haystacks — too many elk, in the middle of wolf country! The hunting seasons for elk actually are being extended.

Dan Ashe, a director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Obama administration, told me that “if Secretary Haaland wishes to stop this killing, the Endangered Species Act gives her ample authority and discretion to stop it — cold.”

That’s what she should do.