What U.S. President Trump’s initial executive orders could mean for animals

From HumaneSociety.org:

Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House last month for a second term, his administration has been issuing dozens of executive orders, some of which can have an impact on animals.

Executive orders are presidential instructions designed to direct federal government agencies and their staff members to take (or not take) certain actions, and it is customary for presidents to issue them early in their tenure to make good on campaign promises and/or pivot to agency agendas of their own. A permissible and legal executive order needs to be rooted in one of the president’s constitutionally outlined powers or in a law approved by the Congress.

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Washington sheriffs would welcome bigger role in wolf management

From CapitalPress.com:

OLYMPIA — Two sheriffs told the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee that county officials in northeast Washington should have more say in managing wolves. Stevens County Sheriff Brad Manke and Ferry County Sheriff Ray Maycumber testified Wednesday for a bill calling for local boards to develop wolf-management plans in counties with at least three reproducing wolf packs.

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A North Carolina wildlife crossing will save people. Can it save the last wild red wolves too?

From Newsday.com:

ALLIGATOR RIVER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, N.C. — Hunters were once the greatest human threat to the country’s only unique wolf species. Today, it’s motorists.

That fact was brought home last June, when red wolf breeding male No. 2444 was struck and killed on U.S. 64 near Manns Harbor, North Carolina. His death likely meant five pups he’d been providing for died, too.

“We were hoping the mother would return and resume care, but she never did,” Joe Madison, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s red wolf recovery program, said during a recent visit to the site.

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Museomics and morphological analyses of historical and contemporary peninsular Italian wolf (Canis lupus italicus) samples

From Nature.com:

After centuries of decline and protracted bottlenecks, the peninsular Italian wolf population has naturally recovered. However, an exhaustive comprehension of the effects of such a conservation success is still limited by the reduced availability of historical data. Therefore, in this study, we morphologically and genetically analyzed historical and contemporary wolf samples, also exploiting the optimization of an innovative bone DNA extraction method, to describe the morphological variability of the subspecies and its genetic diversity during the last 30 years.

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More and more large predators are being killed

From SwedenHerald.com:

Never before have so many large predators been shot in Sweden as in the last ten years. Since 2015, over 4,400 bears, 1,100 lynxes, 400 wolves, and 180 wolverines have been killed during licensed and protective hunting.

The information comes from the Rovbase database, which is managed by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the Norwegian Environment Directorate.

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Can drones haze wolves?

From wildlife.org:

To stop predation on livestock in Oregon, researchers took to the skies.

Wildlife managers are turning to the sky to keep wolves from livestock, scaring the predators away with drones equipped with speakers.

“We were able to effectively haze wolves away from cattle—and in one case—even stop an attack in progress,” said Dustin Ranglack, Predator Project leader at the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Wildlife Services National Wildlife Research Center.

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When wolves kill livestock, should Colorado grant ranchers anonymity for compensation claims?

From The Arizona Daily Sun:

DENVER — Colorado lawmakers will consider blocking from public record the names of ranchers seeking compensation from the state for livestock killed by wolves and other wild animals after multiple livestock owners said they feared harassment.

The bipartisan legislation, Senate Bill 38, would make the names, addresses and contact information confidential and not subject to the Colorado Open Records Act.

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Legislators aim to remove federal protections from gray wolves

From CraigDailyPress.com:

Gray wolves could be removed from the federal Endangered Species Act under a bill reintroduced by Republican U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin on Friday.

The Pet and Livestock Protection Act would restore a 2020 rule from the first Trump administration — which was later repealed by a federal district court in 2022 — and turn management of gray wolves back to the states. It includes a provision to ensure the action is not subject to judicial review.

Boebert and Tiffany also introduced the act last Congress session. While it passed the House of Representatives, it failed to make it through the Senate.

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Monitoring to help manage the wolf better [Austria]

From Kronen Zeitung:

The wolf is back, but the rural population’s joy is limited. Provincial Councillor for Agriculture Michaela Langer-Weninger wants to use monitoring to create a basis for sustainable management measures. The aim is to prove the favorable conservation status of the wolf population and to accelerate the downgrading of its protected status at European level.

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Grazing project could burden endangered wolves, conservationists tell Ninth Circuit

From CourthouseNews.com:

PHOENIX  [AZ] — Conservationists asked the Ninth Circuit Monday to order the U.S. Forest Service to reconsider the potential impacts of a large-scale grazing project on the continued recovery and survival of the Mexican gray wolf.

In a Phoenix courtroom Monday morning, the Western Watersheds Project told a three-judge panel that cattle grazing in the Greater Gila Bioregion — an area spanning the central portion of the Arizona-New Mexico border that is home to at least 26 sensitive species — could threaten the recovery of the endangered Mexican gray wolf, whose population has increased to more than 200 since dropping to just seven wolves in the 1980s.

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