Two Animal Rights Groups Join

February 8, 2008 - According to a press release issued this week, Forest Guardians and Sinapu, two Western regional conservation groups, have joined forces to create a stronger organization to, as they say, "protect and restore the wild places, wildlife and wild rivers in the American West."

The new organization called WildEarth Guardians creates a wildlife advocacy group who says it will pressure policy-makers and government agencies to protect and restore the lands, wildlife and waters from the Great Plains and Desert Southwest across the Rockies and through the Intermountain West.

A few of WildEarth Guardians priorities include restoring wolves to the American West, including protecting Mexican wolves in the Gila bioregion and reintroducing wolves to the southern Rockies; restoring keystone species such as prairie dogs across the American West; restoring wildfire as a natural and restorative process in healthy western forest ecosystems; and abolishing the USDA's Wildlife Services program.

Forest Guardians and Sinapu were two of the primary petitioners requesting that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cancel the uses of M-44s and Compound 1080.

"This organization, with its stated purpose of shutting down predator control, is further proof that the EPA petition is not about the safety of the M-44 but rather another of irs attacks on predator control and tools," stated Peter Orwick, executive director of the American Sheep Industry Association. "The wild allegations about safety and homeland security of the U.S. are no more than a smokescreen to address the lethal control of coyotes."

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