Nebraska state Sen. Ernie Chambers is back with his anti-hunting crusade against scientific management of mountain lions. The senator led an identical charge in 2014 when the legislature passed a bill to ban mountain-lion hunting, which was ultimately vetoed by then-Gov. Dave Heineman.

Chambers reintroduced his legislation (LB 127) on Friday, Jan. 9, along with a new effort to ban the management of prairie dogs, including on private property (LB 128).

“The Sportsmen’s community in Nebraska did a great job last year in rallying opposition to this ideological attack on wildlife management, and we’ll need a similar response this year,” said Adam Wright, USSA’s associate director of state services. “Sportsmen across Nebraska, and really across the country, must speak up and let their state senators know how misguided this effort is.” Read more

On Dec. 20, a federal district court judge in Washington D.C. struck down the delisting of wolves in the western Great Lakes region, and returned them to federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. This move was not based upon the population of wolves—which have clearly recovered in the area—but instead, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that until wolves are re-established in their historical range (which would apparently include New York City, Washington D.C., Seattle, etc.) they cannot be considered recovered in Michigan, Minnesota or Wisconsin, no matter how large the wolf populations in those three states.

For nearly a decade, the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and our partners have led the attempt to delist recovered populations of wolves from the Endangered Species List and to return them to management of individual states.

Judge Howell’s ruling leaves two realistic options for sportsmen, conservationists and those interested in the sound management of fish and wildlife:  legal and congressional action. Read more

This from www.Humanewatch.org…

The deceptively named Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) recently jumped all over media reports of Pope Francis hinting that animals might go to heaven. The news delighted many animal lovers, who already hoped that their four-legged friends would join them in the afterlife.

But HSUS was elated for a different reason. As you might expect, HSUS seized the opportunity to push its extremist agenda—like PETA, HSUS has a department aimed at inserting animal rights ideology into theology. There’s just one problem: The pontiff never made the alleged statement.

Initially, news outlets incorrectly attributed quotes from former Popes—including a statement by the late Pope Paul VI that “we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ”—to the present-day Pontiff. In reality, the Pope simply stated: “The Holy Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this wonderful design also affects everything around us.” That’s a far cry from the papal endorsement of animal heaven publicized by HSUS and its radical bedfellow, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

Wayne “I don’t love animals” Pacelle celebrated the misreported statement in a blog post decisively headlined: “Pope Francis Says All Animals Can Go to Heaven.” Yet when the misconstrued events were clarified, most members of the media exercised journalistic integrity by quickly issuing corrections to their stories. With one notable exception: Pacelle has yet to acknowledge his mistake.

No surprise there. HSUS and Pacelle don’t exactly have a record of honesty and integrity. They have an agenda to push, and they don’t need facts to get in the way.

Our report shows that ninety—yes, 90—percent of HSUS’s donors were unaware that it gives just one percent of its budget to local pet shelters. It makes sense, then, that Wayne Pacelle is in no hurry to correct his inaccurate representation of the Pope. After all, HSUS is funded by donors who agree that the group “misleads people” by misrepresenting its motives and goals.

Even in the middle of his ostensibly “spiritual” blog post about animals going to heaven, Pacelle manages to sneak in a link to one of his donation pages. When will it end?

In October, a federal court in D.C. returned Wyoming’s wolves to the endangered species list. The court rejected the delisting of Wyoming’s wolves based on the fact that Wyoming’s commitment to manage wolves above minimum population levels was not part of a legally binding regulation or statute. Considering Wyoming’s plans to be merely “voluntary,” and therefore not sufficient to meet Endangered Species Act delisting requirements, the court sent the delisting decision back to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

Wyoming attempted to prevent the return of its wolves to endangered status by promptly addressing the court’s concerns and immediately adopting the population commitment as a state regulation. The FWS, Wyoming, and SCI, together with the NRA and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF), all filed motions with the court, asking that the ruling be amended to recognize Wyoming’s efforts. The court denied all motions, insisting that the FWS initiate a new delisting process. Read more

A D.C. federal district court judge has returned the wolves of the Western Great Lakes (WGL) to the endangered species list.  This was the fourth time that a delisting of the WGL wolves has been overturned in court.  In a 111 page opinion, the judge ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) violated the Endangered Species Act by illegally creating the Western Great Lakes Distinct Population Segment of wolves.  The court decided that the FWS lacks authority to delist anything less than what they originally listed.  Since the FWS had originally listed gray wolves throughout the lower 48 states, the court held that the FWS lacked the authority to delist any population segment smaller than the species as a whole.  The court rejected the argument that the wolves of Minnesota, which the FWS had designated as “threatened” in 1978, qualified as a DPS that the FWS could later delist.

The court also had problems with many other aspects of the delisting rule.  The court found the FWS’s explanation of certain issues lacking, such as the significance of the wolves’ absence from areas of their historic range, the absence of regulatory protections of wolves in many of the states – those other than Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — that had been included in the DPS, and the existence of risks to the wolves from multiple sources of mortality.

The court rejected arguments submitted by the FWS, the states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as SCI’s intervenor group (also including the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the Wisconsin Bowhunters Association, the Upper Peninsula Bear Houndsmen Association, the Michigan Hunting Dog Federation, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation) that recommended that the judge not invalidate the delisting rule and instead simply remand the rule to the FWS for further correction and explanation.  The judge was unconvinced that the relisting would cause disruption in the management of the species.  The judge chose instead to vacate the delisting rule and restored the wolves to federal protection.

SCI’s Litigation Team is studying this ruling and in the next few days will be analyzing its impact, not only on the future of WGL wolves, but also on other species potentially poised to be delisted.  SCI will also be consulting with attorneys for the FWS, states and other defendant-intervenors to discuss a potential appeal of this ruling.