http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/house-overturns-obama-era-law-protect-alaskan-bears-wolves-n722481
A grizzly bear in the wild. Photo by Jessica Weiller.
Photo via Good Free Photos
H.J. Res 69
http://naturalresources.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=118697
The language of the resolution introduced by Rep. Don Young (R-AK) states that their disapproval under the Congressional Review Act to overturn an August 5, 2016 final rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "The rule takes authority away from the State of Alaska to manage fish and wildlife for both non-subsistence and subsistence uses on federal wildlife refuges in Alaska."
Under the overturned federal law, hunters were prohibited from shooting or trapping wolves while at their dens with cubs or using airplanes or helicopters to hunt them from the air. It also prohibited using inhumane traps and luring bears with food to get point blank kills. This act, however, will allow hunters once again to kill such predators from the air or in their dens and to brush the dust off of those old clunky mechanical traps that were for so long forbidden because they cause the animals to suffer greatly.
Wolves and Bears are known as Keystone Species, that is, their presence or absence in an ecosystem has far-reaching consequences that go well beyond themselves. "The keystone at the top of an arch holds all the stones in place. Without it, the arch collapses." - Keystoneconservation.com. Take this species out of the ecosystem, and, more so than a non-Keystone Species, the effects ripple out to create negative impacts on the entire ecosystem, from the health of marshes and grasslands, water quality, vegetation growth and general survival rates within the ecosystem. One particular EPA study noted the role wolves played when reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Without the wolves, elk suffered their own population booms and busts, booming, they would nibble vegetation down to the bare earth, to the point where the plants did not survive and thus regrow. Elk suffered massive die-offs due to subsequent starvation. Beavers, also, returned due to the wolves maintaining elk populations, which protected those shrubs along the marshlands to provide crucial habitat, and with the beavers' return, water quality improved, marshlands expanded, thus causing further ecosystem repair with fish and amphibian life thriving.
All ecosystems are very intricately-connected webs, every species has a role that impacts and influences the health and well-being of those animals and plants around it. If we fail to protect Keystone species, we will fail to protect entire ecosystems.
Wolf running in the snow in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Photo by Barry O'Neill.
Photo via Good Free Photos
Please reach out to your senators and demand they do act in the best interest of the environment. The senate has the opportunity to do the right thing here, we just need to call them, email them, let them know that permitting hunters this level of free reign is most certainly not what we want to have happen. Protections exist for a reason, removing them on this kind of whim is foolish and misguided.
This world belongs to all of us. We must be stewards of this Earth and do our best to conserve and protect crucial diversity of both animals and plants. Shooting or gassing bear cubs or wolf pups in their dens, slaying them from helicopters is not hunting, it is slaughter, it is despicable. Though this action is happening way up in Alaska, not down here in Georgia, I can't help but feel a certain connection to the fate of these snoozing pups and cubs, they were federally protected, that means our federal government protected them for all of us, from the Alaskan to the Floridian or Texan who might never see one up close but will nevertheless appreciate their persisting beauty and the impact they have in the wider ecosystem as a whole. Furthermore, if we don't stand up right now and say no to this trampling of endangered species protections, it's only a matter of time before critically endangered species in our own backyard no longer get the protection they so desperately need and deserve.
Thank you for reading. Peace.
For more information, please visit the following resources:
http://www.vitalground.org/grizzly-bears-keystone-species/
http://www.keystoneconservation.us/keystone_conservation/keystone-species.html
http://www.worldwildlife.org/species
https://www.fws.gov/endangered/laws-policies/
https://www.fws.gov/endangered/map/state/GA.html
https://www.epa.gov/endangered-species/about-endangered-species-protection-program
https://www.nwf.org/What-We-Do/Protect-Wildlife/Endangered-Species.aspx
https://georgia.gov/blog/2016-07-28/endangered-species-georgia
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