Join Jay Petrequin to hear the latest in wildlife news from Defenders Of Wildlife!
Transcript:
An unimaginable end for a Wyoming wolf. A lawsuit to save an iconic forest. And new protections for a desert dwelling reptile. I’m Jay Petrequin and this is your wildlife news for April 2024. Starting off with appalling news coming out of Wyoming, where a juvenile Gray Wolf was captured and tortured by a local man. After the wolf was shown off in a bar and murdered, the man was only fined a nominal $250 for the illegal possession of a live wolf. Unfortunately, this is the permissible and predictable result of Wyoming’s policy decisions, which authorize the killing of wolves without limit on season number or method, no matter how morally abhorrent. It’s long past time for the state of Wyoming to join its neighbors in recognizing the reality that wolves have a place in their native landscape of the Rocky Mountains. Heading over to the forests of the southeast, where Defenders Of Wildlife, as part of a coalition of conservation groups, filed a lawsuit over glaring flaws in the Nantahala-Pisgah forest plan that puts endangered forest bats at risk. The newly published plan aims to quintuple the amount of logging in the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests and puts sensitive areas, including important habitat for endangered forest bats on the chopping block. The flawed analysis clearly violates the Endangered Species Act, which requires federal agencies to use the best available science when considering how their decisions might harm federally protected species. April wasn’t all bad news, though. Over on the West Coast, the California Fish and Game Commission made a unanimous decision to list the Mojave Desert Tortoise as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act. With their long lifespans, slow growth and low reproductive rates, tortoise populations will need decades to recover from population declines. And that’s only if we can provide environment with sustained relief from threats. Listing the species as endangered under the state ESA will give them the best chance at successful recovery. Head to defenders.org/newsroom for more wildlife news and please help us defend wildlife by subscribing and sharing this video.
Defenders Of Wildlife works on the ground, in the courts, and on Capitol Hill to protect and restore imperiled wildlife and habitats across North America.
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