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We need your
voice and we need it now! Go to http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50979/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=18672.
During this
session, Governor Hogan had the unprecedented opportunity to appoint all five
members to the Handgun Permit Review Board. This board reviews appeals when
someone is denied a concealed-carry permit by the Secretary of the Maryland
State Police (MSP). The board has the authority to overturn the MSP’s ruling.
All five
appointments are about to be voted on Tuesday in the State Senate. While all
five appointments will make for an unbalanced board, the most egregious
appointment up for a vote is Richard Jurgena. Jurgena is a gun right’s
advocate who has continually voiced his belief that our concealed-carry
permit laws are unconstitutional and that they should be loosened. How
can we reasonably trust someone to enforce a law they view as
unconstitutional? Marylander’s to Prevent Gun Violence is calling on the
State Senate to reject his nomination.
TOMORROW, THE
STATE SENATE WILL VOTE TO CONFIRM THE APPOINTEES! We need you to
urgently send a message to your State Senator to demand that he or she REJECT THE MOST VOCAL GUN RIGHTS
ACTIVIST, RICHARD JURGENA!
Maryland’s
common-sense gun laws and concealed carry permit restrictions are intended to
keep Marylanders safe. Loosening these restrictions by placing this gun
rights advocate on the Review Board puts Maryland citizens and families at
risk.
The vote is
tomorrow - there's no time to waste,
Jen Pauliukonis
Legislative Director |
OR-4, the alpha male of the Inmaha pack of wolves that lived in Eastern Oregon, before he was shot to death Thursday. (photo: Center for Biological Diversity)
Family
of Wolves Shot Dead in Oregon
By Joe Donnelly, TakePart
03 April 16
The
bullet he’d been dodging for many years finally caught up with the great
Oregon wolf,
OR4, Thursday. In the early afternoon, officials from the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) shot to death the patriarch of the Imnaha Pack from a
helicopter over Wallowa County, an area where gray wolves dispersing from Idaho
first began returning to Oregon, where they’d been killed off in the mid-20th
century. Shot along with OR4 was his likely pregnant partner, OR 39, known as
Limpy for an injured and badly healed leg, and their two pups.
The
animals were killed for being presumed guilty of the deaths of four calves and
a sheep on private pastureland on the fringes of the pack’s territory in
northeast Oregon.
Rob
Klavins, who has been a wolf advocate on the front lines of the cultural and
political battles that have accompanied the reemergence of wolves in the West
as field coordinator for the conservation group Oregon
Wild, heard the helicopters take off and knew the sound spelled doom
for OR4.
“It
was hard for a lot of people,” said Klavins, reached on Friday at his home near
the town of Joseph in Wallowa County. “Even some of his detractors had a
begrudging respect” for OR4, the fourth wolf to be fitted with a
location-tracking radio collar in Oregon. He weighed at least 115 pounds, the
largest known wolf in Oregon at the time of his death, and survived for 10
years, three years longer than most wolves in the wild.
OR4
and his progeny have been largely responsible for the gray wolf’s intrepid
return to lands where the species was long ago hunted, poisoned, trapped,
burned and otherwise chased nearly to extinction.
Cattle
farmers, who receive a subsidy from taxpayers to graze their animals on vast
ranges of publicly-owned land where the wolves also dwell, worry about wolves
killing their property. Hunters want first shot at the game, such as deer and
elk, that wolves favor. But livestock depredations in Oregon are extremely
rare, and have become scarcer even as the wolf population has increased.
Meanwhile, ODFW’s data shows that Oregon’s wolves are having no effect on elk,
deer and wild sheep populations. Of course, those statistics are small
consolation to the rancher who suffered the loss of property in March.
In
early 2008, OR4 and his mate at the time, OR2, were among the first wolves to
swim the Snake River, scale enormous mountains, and establish a foothold for
wolves in game-rich Wallowa County. Since then, more than 110 Oregon wolves
have spread from the remote northeast corner of the state, over the Cascades,
and to near the California border. Many of these pioneering wolves were spawned
by OR4.
Beginning with his first pack in 2009, OR4
fathered, provided for, and protected dozens of wolf pups that survived in the
Oregon wild—and made their way all the way south to California, where OR7, known as the “lone wolf,” trekked
in 2012. Today, OR7 has his own pack in
the California-Oregon border region. The alpha female of the Shasta pack—the
first gray wolf pack to make California home since 1924—is the offspring of
OR4.
That
OR4 lasted this long is source of wonder to those who have followed his starring
role in Oregon’s gray-wolf comeback story. In 2011, a brief cattle-killing
spree by the Imnaha pack had him slated for execution. A suit by Oregon Wild
and other conservation groups stayed the execution order and OR4 settled into a
mostly incident-free life as Oregon’s biggest and baddest-ass wolf.
There
is good reason to believe OR4 was cast out of his pack early this year, and his
decision to move into livestock calving ground was borne of the need of an old,
slowing and dull-toothed male—no longer able to bring down elk—to fend for his
hobbled mate, to whom he was endearingly loyal, and his yearling pups.
“He
was an outlaw wolf with a heart of gold,” said Amaroq Weiss, the West Coast
Wolf Coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Weiss recalled a 2009 video of OR4 leading his Imnaha pack up a snowy
mountainside as a defining image from the early days of Oregon’s wolf recovery.
“He was definitely a father figure.”
The
Shasta Pack that is part of OR4’s legacy will soon be coming into its second
litter. It is protected by the California Endangered Species Act. In Oregon,
though, wolves were removed from the
endangered species list in November, which allowed OR4’s pack
to be shot to death Thursday. Activists have sued to re-list the
animals.
The
wolf management plan that provided the legal justification for the killing of
OR4, Limpy and their pups is up for review in Oregon this year. The state has
determined that the wolf population met benchmarks that allow livestock
producers more lethal options when dealing with depredating wolves. Klavins and
others would like to make sure the updated plan calls for every non-lethal
option to be exhausted before wolves are killed.
“What
was done [Thursday] was sufficient for an agency that views wildlife as agents
of damage and whose primary job is to protect private interests at taxpayer
expense,” Klavins said. “But it’s not good enough for a public agency whose
mission is to ‘protect and enhance Oregon’s fish and wildlife and their
habitats for use and enjoyment by present and future generations,’ ” he
continued, quoting from the agency’s official documents. “They need to do
better. Oregonians deserve better.”
Wolf
advocate Wally Sykes is one of the few to have encountered OR4 in the wild.
“I was
kind of initially prepared for something to happen, but the visual image of an
old wolf being hunted down by a helicopter, with his hobbling mate by his side
and his two freaked out pups along with him, is an ugly picture to carry in
your head,” Sykes said. He said officials he spoke with were “not at all happy
to have killed these wolves.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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