Grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies need your support now.The Secretary of Agriculture is proposing to close a government-sponsored facility in Idaho that has been a massive waste of taxpayer funds and a death trap for grizzly bears.
But the western livestock industry, which benefits from lavish taxpayer subsidies, is mounting strong opposition to prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture from closing the Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, ID.
Those of us who love the great wild places of the west and the bears that make the Northern Rockies so special must stand up now.
Tell your Congressional Representatives to demand that Secretary Vilsack not bend to pressure from the livestock industry. This is one tremendous chance to rewild the Northern Rockies.
Direct conflict with grizzly bear and wolves has made the Sheep Station the subject of continuous litigation and controversy. The Sheep Station has significant impacts on other wildlife as well including coyotes, fox, mountain lions and wolves.
Two entire packs of wolves have been shot, trapped and aerially gunned down because of conflicts with the domestic sheep in the area. Once over 50,000 strong in the lower forty-eight states,
the grizzly bear is now a threatened species that roams less than two percent of its historic range. Federal biologists have identified the Centennial Mountains of southwest Montana and eastern Idaho as the best linkage habitat between Yellowstone National Park and unoccupied wilderness areas in Idaho.
The U.S. Sheep Experiment Station grazes sheep in the heart of this important grizzly travel corridor and has had a reckless license to kill native wildlife. It’s time to bring an end to this institution and re-wild the lands that have been a death trap for grizzlies for decades.
We must stand up and make our voices heard for the great Wild West—
tell your Congressional Representatives to support Secretary Vilsack’s proposal to close the Sheep Station. This is where the legendary grizzly belongs, not a place for a publicly subsidized, sheep research station.
