[Note: The identities of these wolf-hating villains behind the masks are said to be, from left to right: Former Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, Int. Sec. Sally Jewell, Pres. Barack Obama, Former Pres. G.W. Bush, along with his squad of goons, and Dick Cheney, who tagged along hoping to chalk up another hunting accident.]
Article by Camilla Fox, Project Coyote
By the time this blog goes live this photo will probably have been pulled from Facebook. The photo, titled “Wyoming is FED up,” is posted on the FB page, Sportsmen Against Wolves.
As of October 26th the photo had 563 likes and 307 shares, after being posted for less than three days. The posted public comments are disturbing:
“Love this!!!!! I fully understand the masks, yer not idiots like those daring you to show yer faces!!!! Keep on killing guys”
“Smoke a pack a day”
“Kill everyone you see boys!”
What is perhaps most disquieting about the photograph is the vigilante feel that echoes a lynch mob — dehumanize, vilify, and murder. Wolves are now reviled and persecuted in a land where they once roamed wild and free prior to European colonization.
While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes to remove federal protections for gray wolves through most of their historic range in the lower 48 States, blatant hostility toward wolves, coyotes, bears and other native carnivores has intensified. Like the photo above, the vilification of predators has taken on a new hue: one associated with righteous patriotism. But all true Americans should be concerned about this tenor of violence and hatred toward other living beings. What lessons are we teaching young people when we show such blatant disrespect and denigration of wildlife?…when “we” proudly post photos of men with their bloodied victims on Facebook and Twitter? (see this video posted on Facebook of a reported wolf being shot in Idaho — warning: graphic) and when our own federal government condones this violence and wanton animal abuse in its lethal predator control programs?
Anti-wolf hatred fueled a 2011 Congressional rider that removed federal protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes thereby turning management over to the states in these regions. The result: In just seven days of this year’s wolf hunt in Wisconsin, 97 wolves were killed — about twice the pace at which wolves were killed last year, the state’s inaugural and very controversial wolf-hunt season. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources estimates the total state wolf population to be around 800 — and would like trappers and hunters to reduce the population to 350 — a number scientists say is not sustainable.
At least 1,321 wolves have been killed by trophy hunters and commercial and recreational trappers in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho alone. Montana sold over 6,000 wolf-hunting licenses this season; each license — $19 for state residents — allows a person to kill up to five wolves. The current wolf population in Montana is estimated at 625. Wolf watching generates approximately $30 million annually to the towns around Yellowstone; the cost to reintroduce and recover wolves into the Northern Rockies was estimated to be more than $150 million. What is the value of a wolf alive — over the course of his or her lifetime — compared to one-shot dead for a $19 wolf-hunting license? Ethics of recreational killing of wolves aside, economics does not justify this insanity.
Members of Congress, predator friendly ranchers, respected scientists have spoken out publicly against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to remove federal protections for wolves arguing that delisting is premature and is not scientifically sound. The Service has extended the public comment period regarding their proposal to delist wolves from the ESA and has rescheduled public hearings. If you want to see wolves in the wild please click here, take action, and make your voice heard. Then share this blog post with others. The Service will accept comments through December 17th. Check out Project Coyote’s homepage and Facebook page for more updates.
Follow Camilla Fox on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/projectcoyote
Exposing the Big Game 
Only Cowards kill animals ! This is a disgrace. I was recently on Washington D.C. ” The rally for Wolves”. RE- List the Wolves!
Reblogged this on Howling For Justice and commented:
Thank you Bill for once again standing up for the voiceless wolves who are being decimated by these savages. This says it all:
“The Northern Rockies have become an unsupervised playpen for reactionaries to act out warrior fantasies against demonic wolves, coastal elites, and idiotic environmentalists — the members of these latter two categories being “two-legged” wolves. The sheer extremity of the hatred shown to wolves, and the bizarre juxtaposition of the KKK-like hoods and American flag, plainly expose this movement for what it is: A scapegoating of the wolves by men and women who have succumbed to their own rage against imagined enemies”
Well put, Nabeki! If there wasn’t a poor dead wolf in the picture, it would look like a ’70s garage band of high school shop class drop-outs. Not exactly the Northern Rockies Think Tank! It’s just a shame that these morons actually managed to kill a wolf. As usual, they are spineless cowards. And if they really had two brain cells between them they would know that if they believe their government to be against them, they would know enough to hang the flag upside down! But according to a real war vet that I know, most of the wolf killers are 4-F, too unstable to serve in the military. Probably too unstable to hold down a real job either? Should we be worried? I’m not but I was concerned when I lived near there, not for myself but for my animals. I guarantee you that this is not the bunch telling Congress what to do. That would be more like Enbridge and the Koch Bros. Who not only want wolves delisted they want the ESA and the EPA disolved to make way for fracking, drilling, water mining, super corrodors with 12 lane trucking roads, pipelines and huge high tension wires right through endangered species habitat! When the money tossed around becomes more than what logically, the average working persons in the ‘group’ could donate then it’s a shell corporation for people who don’t want their names in the frey.
Melody..when I first reblogged this I thought this was Bill Gibson’s piece from Earth Island Journal, because he and Camilla Fox both used the same picture of these wolf killer/crazies. So that’s why I quoted Bill and thanked him. Turns out there are two different articles. But they are both moving and spot on.
I agree with everythiung you said. The Northern Rockies has always had this fringe element that never seems to go away. They’ve been itching to scapegoat wolves so they could pretend they were offing enviros, libs and all the other perceived threats that are swimming around in their addled brains. That is one scary photo.
The wolves have enemies on all sides and that’s only because Congress let this happen. These wackos would still be plotting the wolf holocaust and not being able to do a damn thing about it if the Dems hadn’t unleashed hell on earth on them just to win Tester’s Senate seat and keep their damn majority. We’re talking Boxer, Feinstein, Kerry, both Udalls, the lot of them that sold wolves down the river. I blame them for all of this cause the crazies have always been here…now they’ve been unleashed.
Nabeki, that is the most insidious part of the wolf slaughter… that this atrocity came to be because of back-room (and overt) political chicanery. It’s disgusting beyond comprehension. You are so well versed on this issue, I can’t begin to imagine the turmoil you feel when you encounter the mentality depicted here … over and over and over again.
Reblogged this on " OUR WORLD".
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This should be on billboards as tourist are entering Yellowstone
WELCOME TO AMERICA THE LAND OF THE FREE
I should be proud to be an American, but these twisted freaks make me want to burn my flag !!!
Reblogged this on The Wisdom Tube and commented:
Just another bunch of so-called “patriots” showing they’re the REAL “Americans” by killing innocent animals to feed their NEED TO KILL. I’m reminded of a Mark Twain quote: “Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one… that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.”
Sadly, some of them do have three brain cells. But none of them are connected.
Well, the same three brain cells must be immune to thinking ahead or maybe it was the blood and cheap beer that made them publish such a stupid, crazy photo online? Check out the clotheslines for mens undershorts with eyes and mouth holes cut out of the ass, that’s the only clothing in white that guys wear into the woods this time of year. 🙂 Either that or the Walmart that is out of white pillow cases…? Actually, we should encourage them to wander the woods during deer season with their drawers on their heads…splat…oops.
Ha Ha haaaaa
We must keep our sense of humor or we risk ‘becoming our enemies’ or in other words, losing our souls. Glad I could help you get a little giggle out of what is otherwise total insanity and sheer hate and racism. Without the poor dead wolf those guy’s would look like an out-take from Blazing Saddles.:-)
@Nabeki, I know the whole history of shameless political tactics of the wolf delisting. I was probably the only one not caught off guard because to me, they are republicrats. Poli= many, ticks= bloodsucking parasites. I know we have a couple of good wolf advocates in Congress but until polls the others see that show a good majority of voters will de-list congress if they don’t re-list wolves, it won’t happen! But even the ESA is not safe enough from this bunch of fringe crazies.
Don’t worry about who wrote what, we are all on track with wolves and wildlife needing protections and rights, we’re all howling pissed about things the way they are these days but the tides do change. Especially when the wolf haters give us political gifts like that photo that screams racism, how proud their elected officials must be?…Not! I think they should all, in the spirit of free speech, get an 8 x 10 color glossy in the mail, suitable for framing? To hang in their offices in DC…
Really? Wake up Melody. This is occurring with Obama’s blessing. They are all corrupt. Don’t fool yourself into thinking wildlife is safe with dems/liberals. The Obama admin just OK’d the continued slaughter of eagles, hawks and bats, etc. by wind power…If you believe it’s just some conservatives, you’re living in an imaginary world.
Reblogged this on Wolf Is My Soul.
Aren’t wolves the animals that gave us man’s best friend? I’m surprised I’ve never heard of any of these murderers turning around and shooting and killing their own dog yet.