To conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.

This is the mission statement of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Yet, their actions this spring have conveyed an entirely different intention: USFWS has been on a wolf killing spree in western Wyoming. 10 wolves from three separate packs have been “eliminated” by aerial gunning, and, in the words of Mike Jimenez, the USFWS’ wolf coordinator, “if we could have got more, we would have taken more.”

What was these animals’ crime? Behaving like wolves. They have attacked some cattle on a local ranch, and for this, the USFWS has decided to kill all of the remaining 11 members of the Dell Creek pack. It is spring. These wolves have likely just had pups. Mowing down the remaining 11 adults will mean starvation and death of the new puppies.

The USFWS is simply acting as ranchers’ henchman in Wyoming right now. A 2014 study funded by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife found that livestock killings actually increase when area wolves are killed. But the very next year, Jimenez wrote a response saying that killing lots of wolves from aggressive packs is an effective deterrent, and this has been the policy ever since.

54 Wyoming wolves were killed in 2015, and 2016 is on track to see an even higher body count. We must stop this. We must demand that the USFWS stand up first and foremost for the protection of wild animals, and use nonlethal means to reduce wolf-livestock conflict in the case of the Dell Creek Pack.

Nonlethal techniques to deter the Dell Creek pack have not even been attempted this spring. Instead, the service resorted immediately to collaring one member of the pack, then using that “Judas” wolf to track and shoot the others from planes.

This is not the will of the public. The USFWS is serving special interests from private cattle ranchers, and is wreaking havoc on endangered wolf populations in the very areas where they were reintroduced by us, to save them from the brink of extinction in the U.S.

Please sign this petition to make your voice heard. Call on the USFWS to act on behalf of wildlife and the public trust, and cease the extermination of the Dell Creek wolf pack immediately.