Sarah Palin: A wolf-killer in Veep's clothing.

One reason this blog was started was to inform people of the current threats to wolves. One of those threats is Sarah Palin. The Bush administration and the current vice presidential candidate may be the worst thing to happen to wolves in the 21st century. First we had Bush to deal with. This is the situation taken from an email I received from the National Recourses Defense counsel.

Last March, the Bush Administration declared the Northern Rockies' wolf population "fully recovered," then it handed off responsibility for the wolves to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Just as we predicted, a bloodbath ensued, with 110 wolves slaughtered by state agents and hunters in as many days.

NRDC, Earthjustice and 11 other conservation groups raced to court and won an injunction that put a temporary halt to the killing until the full case could be heard. We fully expected to fight a drawn-out courtroom battle in order to win a permanent victory.

But thanks to the Bush Administration's surrender, that battle will NOT happen. Instead, the wolves of Yellowstone and the surrounding region will remain protected by federal law.

On the heels of that victory comes Palin, rifle in hand, spouting off about "predator control " like it's 1808 instead of 2008. As the governor of Alaska, Palin wanted to offer a $150 bounty to hunters who shot down a wolf from an airplane and brought in the left foreleg. It's hard to express how sickening this is. Aerial hunting has to be one of the cruelest and unsportsmanlike ways to kill an animal. These wolves are run to exhaustion and then filled with buckshot. They don't die quickly, it's not a "clean kill;" they writhe in agony before slowly bleeding out onto the snow. There is an excellent ad out by the Defenders of Wildlife that actually shows video footage of these hunts. Saying it's hard to watch would be an understatement. Palin claims to be "pro-life," but she's actually "pro-death." As an avid trophy hunter, Palin hopes to use "predator control" (an ugly euphemism for slaughter) to artificially boost moose and caribou populations for human hunters. And wolves are not the only animals on Palin's hit-list. She actually sued the Bush administration to remove endangered species status from Polar Bears. Scientist are predicting Polar Bears will be extinct in fifty years and this woman wants to declare open season on them! Keeping this woman out of office should be top priority for those who love wildlife.