Motion seeks to prevent “irreparable” wolf killing pending ruling on legality of State’s wolf-hunting policies 

HELENA, MONTANA— A motion was filed today asking a Montana state court to prohibit the start of the state’s wolf-trapping season as well as to immediately halt the on-going wolf-hunting season while the merits of a pending lawsuit are being considered. Conservation groups WildEarth Guardians and Project Coyote, a project of Earth Island Institute, filed the time-sensitive motion with the wolf trapping and snaring season set to begin on November 28, 2022. The hunting season began in September.

Today’s motion comes two weeks after the conservation groups filed the initial lawsuit against the State of Montana, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MFWP) and the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission (the “Commission”) alleging that the state’s current wolf hunting and trapping regulations violate numerous laws and the Montana constitution.

The motion asks the court to issue a temporary restraining order, followed by a preliminary injunction, to stop all recreational killing of wolves in the state pending resolution of the lawsuit. In the 2021-2022 season, 273 wolves were killed by hunters and trappers—including 19 Yellowstone wolves—with nearly 70 percent of the wolves killed after the trapping season began on November 29, 2021. So far, hunters have killed 55 wolves this season, while regulations permit hunters and trappers to kill an additional 395 wolves before the season ends in March 2023. The motion alleges that the conservation groups’ interests will be harmed beyond repair if the court allows the hunting and trapping season to proceed while they fully litigate their case. 

Notably, the motion—and the underlying lawsuit—claim that there are significant flaws in the population model used to estimate the total number of wolves in the state. Since the 456 quota for the 2022-2023 season relies upon a flawed population model, reaching the quota could have devastating consequences on the state’s wolf population. Per allegations in the motion, “Montana does not have an accurate picture of how many wolves are living in Montana and cannot sustainably and legally manage the species through another wolf hunt this winter.”

“At the time of this writing, the lives of 55 wolves have already been claimed in Montana since the September start of the hunting season,” said Michelle Lute, PhD in wolf conservation and carnivore conservation director for Project Coyote, an organization that works to protect native carnivores. “Multiple studies document that illegal poaching increases during legal recreation hunts so we know that untold numbers of additional wolves, as well as non-target animals, have been indiscriminately killed and are not reflected in the official death toll. We need to put a halt to this season’s wolf hunting and trapping seasons at least until the court can determine whether the state of Montana is in violation of its policies.” 

This motion is part of the groups’ lawsuit filed on October 27, which claims that the State of  Montana, MFWP, and the Commission are violating the law by relying on stale and insufficient scientific data in order to authorize the killing of roughly 40 percent of the state’s wolf population this coming winter. The suit also alleges that the state is flouting its responsibility to manage wildlife for the benefit of the entire public and is overstepping its management authority by allowing wolf slaughter on the boundaries of federal lands, namely Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. For more information about the specific claims in the complaint and the legal background that led to this lawsuit, read our initial complaint here.

“Montana’s wolf hunting and trapping season must be stopped before our state’s wolf population faces potential decimation and the point of no return,” said Lizzy Pennock, Montana-based carnivore coexistence advocate at WildEarth Guardians. “As long as the wolf killing season continues, each wolf that suffers and dies under the alleged unconstitutional and illegal policies is a wolf that should never have been killed in the first place.” 

During the approval process for the challenged hunting and trapping regulations, first adopted in 2021, MFWP noted that the new killing method most anticipated to increase the number of dead wolves is snares, because snares are cheap, easy to place in abundance, and easy to maintain in bad weather. Additionally, trapping and snaring are inherently non-selective for the target species. Research shows that neck snares are anywhere from 21-50 percent selective, and foot snares are approximately 32-45 percent effective at capturing the intended animal. Non-target animals that die in traps and snares set for wolves include, among others, companion animals, deer, bighorn sheep, and imperiled species such as grizzly bears and Canada lynx. 

November 10, 20225:00 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/10/1133090748/here-are-3-dangerous-climate-tipping-points-the-world-is-on-track-for

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An iceberg in Ilulissat, Greenland. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting rapidly, and that melt will accelerate as the Earth heats up.

Ryan Kellman/NPR

The goal of the international climate meeting underway in Egypt is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to temperatures in the late 1800s. Even at that level, communities will experience more dangerous storms, flooding and heat waves.

But if the planet heats up beyond 1.5 degrees, the impacts don’t get just slightly worse. Scientists warn that abrupt changes could be set off, with devastating impacts around the world.

Notes

Global temperatures have increased nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1800s. Here, federal scientists show that change using the average temperature over each 5-year period going back to 1880.

Credit: NASA

Such changes are sometimes called climate tipping points, although they’re not as abrupt as that term would suggest. Most will unfold over the course of decades. Some could take centuries. Some may be partially reversible or avoidable. But they all have enormous and lasting implications for the humans, plants and animals on Earth. And they are looming.

It’s still possible to avoid such widespread calamities, but only if countries move far more aggressively to cut the pollution driving climate change. The Earth has warmed about 1 degree Celsius so far. If countries, including the United States, follow through on current promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the latest estimates suggest that Earth’s temperature will still top out around 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming.

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Here are the three most important and well-studied changes, from collapsing ice sheets to thawing Arctic permafrost, to disappearing coral reefs.

A group of scientists from the United Kingdom trek up to a research site on the west side of the Greenland ice sheet near Kangerlussuaq in the summer of 2022. This year marks the 26th year that Greenland has lost more ice than it gained.

Ryan Kellman/NPR

Change #1: Ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica could collapse

Ice sheets are the massive expanses of ice that cover Greenland and Antarctica, and which contain about two thirds of the freshwater on Earth. Climate change is already causing them to melt, and raising sea levels around the world.

But if the Earth lingers at, or above, 2 degrees Celsius of warming, as it is on track to, that melting will steadily accelerate. Scientists warn that will cause parts of the ice sheets to collapse, sending massive amounts of water into the world’s oceans.

The million dollar question is how quickly that collapse will occur. “Collapse tends to be a bit of a loaded world. People think of it like a building collapse,” says Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington who has spent decades studying how giant glaciers move and change.

“Maybe a better timescale for an ice sheet [collapsing] is the Roman Empire,” Joughin explains. Like a dying empire, the ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica are huge. It will take decades or even centuries for them to disintegrate.

Snow and ice are melting more quickly than they are being replaced on the world’s largest ice sheets. That’s causing the ice sheets to get out of balance and rapidly destabilize, sending enormous amounts of freshwater into the ocean and driving global sea level rise.

Ryan Kellman/NPR

This year marks the 26th year that Greenland has lost more ice than it gained. Last year, rainfall was recorded at the ice sheet’s highest point, rather than snow, a sign that warmer temperatures were triggering widespread melting.

As temperatures continue to warm, scientists say the two-mile thick ice sheet is getting out of balance. Snow and ice are melting faster than they’re being replaced, and as the ice melt accelerates, the process is difficult to stop. One study found that no matter how humans cut greenhouse gas emissions going forward, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is likely to cause 10 inches of sea level rise.

Research suggests that the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet may already be underway. A massive glacier there, which covers an area about the size of the state of Washington, is melting quickly in response to climate change, and could splinter into the ocean in the coming decades.

The Getz Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. Scientists are working to figure out exactly how quickly ice in West Antarctica is collapsing into the sea. The answer has profound implications for coastal communities around the world.

Jeremy Harbeck/NASA

If that glacier melts entirely, it will add so much water to the oceans that sea levels will rise about 2 feet. If the entire West Antarctic ice sheet melts, scientists estimate that sea levels will rise about 12 feet.

Due to their enormous size, ice sheets have a huge amount of inertia. Once the melt process gets underway, it’s difficult to stop.

“It takes a few hundred years to really get going,” says Joughin. “And it’s kind of a snowball effect, where the faster it goes, the more it’s going to go.”

But it will take a long time for people around the world to feel the most extreme effects of that melt. “It could be anywhere from two or three hundred years to a thousand years,” says Joughin.

If humans slow down the pace of global warming, it will help slow down the pace of ice melting, giving the billions of people who live along coastlines more time to adapt.

Change #2: Permanently frozen ground could thaw

Climate change is causing permafrost – the permanently frozen ground in the Arctic – to thaw. And as the Earth approaches 2 degrees Celsius of warming, that thawing ground will cause both local and global problems.

Let’s start local. When permafrost thaws, the ice that’s trapped in the ground turns into water and drains away. “It can have really profound consequences,” says Merritt Turetsky, the director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “We can see lakes draining overnight. We can see ecosystems becoming much drier in some areas, because the permafrost was actually holding the water up at the surface.”

That’s because when the ground is frozen, it’s impermeable to moisture, like the lining of a bathtub. “When it thaws, we pull the drain out of the bathtub,” Turetsky explains.

Scientist Keith Larson walks past a pond formed by thawing permafrost in Sweden.

Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

Thawing permafrost has profound impacts for the millions of people who live in the Arctic. In many places, the land is sinking as it thaws, cracking the foundations of buildings, buckling roads and runways and kinking pipelines. That will accelerate as the Earth heats up more.

Thawing permafrost also has global climate implications. Permanently frozen ground is like the world’s freezer: millennia of dead plants and animals are locked up in permafrost.

“When permafrost thaws it’s a little like losing power to your freezer. That food starts to rot,” explains Ted Schuur, a permafrost expert at Northern Arizona University. Bacteria and fungi start to digest the carbon-rich soil, releasing planet-warming methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Basically, it’s an infinite loop of greenhouse gasses: human emissions cause the planet to heat up. That heat thaws permafrost, which releases more emissions.

But how much extra carbon ultimately gets released by Arctic permafrost in the future is up to humans. “The faster we can decarbonize society today, the more permafrost carbon we can keep in the Arctic ground where it belongs,” says Turetsky. For example, by using renewable energy instead of burning fossil fuels.

But, she warns, there will be a lag: the warming that has already occurred will keep thawing permafrost for decades. “Our climate warming today is going to thaw permafrost and cause that permafrost to lose carbon 50 years from now,” Turetsky explains.

Change #3: Coral reefs could be gone forever

By overall area, coral reefs are a tiny part of the ocean. But they’re a bedrock ecosystem for marine life, supporting an estimated 25% of all species.

Corals are highly sensitive to heat, and as the oceans warm, the future of reefs is in peril. When marine heat waves hit, corals under stress expel their algae companions, which they need to survive. The reefs turn a ghostly white color.

A bleaching event doesn’t necessarily mean the end for a coral reef. Corals have the ability to recover, given enough time. But repeated heat waves, as seen at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, can kill a reef, leading to the collapse of the ecosystem.

Bleaching coral in Kahala’u Bay in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Corals are highly sensitive to heat, and as the oceans warm, the future of reefs is in peril.

Caleb Jones/AP

Oceans are also becoming more acidic, as they absorb the carbon dioxide that humans emit from burning fossil fuels. That also stresses corals, making it difficult for them to build their skeletons.

If the world passes 2 degrees Celsius of heating, an estimated 99% of the world’s coral reefs could be lost. The damage is happening faster than scientists expected. Combined with the effects of pollution and human development, half of all reefs worldwide will be in unlivable conditions by 2035, according to a new study.

“The coming decades will bring, I think, unprecedented change for both these reef systems and humanity in general,” says Erik Franklin, professor at Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who worked on the study.

It’s estimated that half a billion people around the world depend on coral reefs for food, income and livelihoods. Losing reefs would destabilize many countries, along with risking extinction for marine life that can only be found on coral reefs.

“There’s entire societies and economies that are built around reef systems, especially in equatorial and tropical regions,” Franklin says. “So these societies will be in dire straits.”

Many scientists are searching for “refuges” – pockets of the ocean where conditions might remain livable for coral reefs. The hope is that coral reefs can hold on there, surviving just long enough until humans can get their heat-trapping emissions under control.