In every region of the country where federal protections for wolves have been lifted, the states have moved quickly to open sport hunting seasons. From the Northern Rockies to the Great Lakes, trophy hunters and trappers have killed more than 2,000 wolves, often by using cruel and indiscriminate steel-jawed leghold traps. In Wisconsin, the states even allow dogs to chase down by packs of hounds, in what amounts to wolf-dog fighting.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed a lawsuit yesterday in federal court challenging California’s law requiring that eggs sold in the Golden State come from hens that can turn around and stretch their wings.
Congress returns to Washington today to convene the second session of the 113th Congress, and it’s a good time to take stock of what was achieved in 2013 and the pathway for animals in the New Year. In terms of general lawmaking, the 113th Congress has been known for inaction and partisan gridlock. It passed fewer laws in its first year—65—than any single session on record. Yet despite the dysfunction in Washington, we’ve made real progress on key animal protection issues.
The 113th Congress has had the lowest output, in terms of general lawmaking, since 1947. Yet despite the general dysfunction and partisan gridlock in Washington, we’ve made real progress on our key issues. During the first year of the session, we already had one major bill enacted that facilitates the retirement of hundreds of chimps from barren laboratories to natural sanctuaries, and laid substantial groundwork on a number of other issues, particularly a range of reforms to protect horses from cruelty, doping, and slaughter.
There is more fallout today from the Michigan wolf hunt scandal, in which lawmakers and state officials spread fabricated stories about wolf incidents, even as most of the depredation on livestock occurred at one farm that left cattle carcasses out to attract wolves. That farmer has now been charged with animal cruelty for allegedly allowing two “guard donkeys,” paid for by taxpayers, to starve to death.
It’s been a remarkable year of policymaking at the state level, with legislatures so far passing 107 new animal protection measures. A handful of states are still in session and the number may climb, but in total, it makes more than 800 new policies in the states since 2005, across a broad range of subjects bearing upon the lives of pets, wildlife, animals in research, and farm animals. That is tremendous forward progress, closing the gaps in the legal framework for animals, and ushering in new standards in society for how animals are treated.
MLive.com, which reports for eight newspapers across Michigan, has released the first stories in a jarring investigative series on how state politicians used exaggerated or completely fabricated tales of wolf incidents to justify stripping away legal protection for wolves and opening a trophy hunting season on the state’s small population of wolves.
Today marks the first day of Wisconsin’s second consecutive wolf hunting and trapping season in decades. The first wolf was killed this morning after suffering in a steel-jawed leghold trap. It’s another round of killing in what has been a pogrom against wolves in the areas they’ve reclaimed—with hundreds killed in the Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stripped wolves of their federal protections and turned management of their populations over to states with hostile anti-wolf policies.
As we enter the second week of the government shutdown, the to-do list for Congress only gets longer. During the coming weeks, we will hear a lot of talk about the debt ceiling, efforts to reopen the government and debate about cutting various federal programs.
The Forum newspaper in Fargo-Moorhead this past weekend weighed in strongly with an editorial on North Dakota’s anemic anti-cruelty statute, saying that even with the changes in the law taking effect next month, it’s not enough to deal with cruelty cases such as two horrific incidents of dog abuse that had occurred during the prior week. The paper opined: