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Join the Jefferson Humanists’ January monthly chapter meeting for the presentation, Return of the wolf to the Rockies: Will science or politics shape the homecoming of Canis lupus? by Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity (www.biologicaldiversity.org).
Thanks to the 2020 passage of Proposition 114, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is required to develop a gray wolf restoration and management plan and then implement that plan including through reintroducing gray wolves by December 31, 2023. In the meantime, wolves are showing up on their own in northwestern Colorado, and wolf predation on cattle has begun. The history of wolves in Colorado a century ago before they were exterminated and scientific studies of wolves that were reintroduced to the northern Rocky Mountains and Southwest in the 1990’s, can help guide the creation of a restoration and management plan to maximize the ecological benefits of wolves in Colorado and minimize conflicts with livestock owners. But CPW is unlikely to base the plan on science unless Colorado residents insist it do so. If the agency persists in its politicized approach, the wolves, their natural ecosystems, and human communities will reap the downsides.
Michael Robinson is a senior conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity and lives in a rural community at the edge of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, near where reintroduced Mexican gray wolves roam. The Center is a nationwide non-profit conservation organization that helped pass Proposition 114.
Robinson is the author of Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West (University Press of Colorado, 2005), which includes a detailed look at the predator-prey ecology of early-day Colorado, the passage of local and state bounties on wolves in Colorado, and then the advent of a federal wolf extermination program and how that unfolded in Colorado. Predatory Bureaucracy also shows how that unfortunate legacy of predator-extermination west-wide has begun to be reversed through passage of the Endangered Species Act and subsequent wolf reintroduction programs. Robinson holds a master’s degree in literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a bachelor’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Join the Jefferson Humanists on Sunday, January 23rd at 4:00 pm for this presentation.
This program is hosted by Jefferson Humanists, a chapter of the American Humanist Association.
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Since we are unable to meet in person for our normal Monthly Chapter Meetings, we are doing virtual meetings on Zoom.
PLEASE RVSP ON MEETUP OR BY EMAIL TO RSVP@jeffersonhumanists.org GET THE ZOOM LINK FOR THIS MEETING.
Those who RSVP on Meetup will see the link to join the presentation, but you must RSVP before the meeting start time. Those who email for the link will be sent it a few days before the meeting.
For smart devices, get the free Meetup app and RSVP for the link.
Attendance is limited to the first 50 people who RSVP. We hope that you will join us!
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“No amount of good science will stop a politician.” – John Sacklin, management assistant (retired), Yellowstone National Park
