I have never had a pet, other than the goldfish I won as a kid at the Waushara County Fair. But I have a caring spot for animals large and small. There is no other animal, however, I truly love more than the bear populations–with the grizzlies at the top of that list. So the news over the past weeks of the Trump Administration targeting these grand animals has been very concerning to me.
Today the Center for Biological Diversity delivered more than 55,000 postcards from across the country today urging the Trump administration not to remove Endangered Species Act protections from Yellowstone’s grizzly bears.
The Center had originally planned to deliver the postcards to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, but the Department of the Interior refused to accept them or communicate with the Center’s organizers. So instead today they were delivered to the headquarters of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Grizzly bear numbers in and around Yellowstone have improved since the animals were protected in 1975. But they are still threatened by isolation from other grizzly populations, loss of key food sources, human-caused mortalities and, of most concern, proposed trophy hunting by the states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming if protections are removed. Overall grizzly bears occupy less than 4 percent of their historic range in the lower 48 states.
In addition the revolting news that congress voted to allow trapping, baiting, and aerial shooting of wildlife such as grizzly bears on Alaska’s refuges is simply numbing. How lost, soulless, and filled with bile must one be to kill a grizzly at any time–let alone from a plane?
This nation is in a most sorry place.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 