February 5, 2024 Update: As Senate Bill 5939 did not pass out of the Senate Agriculture Committee by February 5 (the cutoff date for bills to leave their committee of origin), it is effectively “dead” for this session.
Your voice made a difference—thank you for speaking out for wolves! Historical information below.
We need your help to stop Senate Bill 5939, a bill to allow livestock owners and their friends to kill wolves over bait.
SB 5939 nominally sets up a pilot program to evaluate the effectiveness of allowing ranchers, their employees, and their “agents,” to kill the first wolf who returns to a livestock predation site. But unlike other carnivores, wolves do not cache prey and then return to feed. This bill would authorize baiting, pure and simple, and there is no scientific basis to believe that allowing ranchers to kill the first wolf to visit a bait site would reduce wolf-livestock conflict.
In reality, SB 5939 would just give livestock owners and their friends a free license to kill wolves in the general vicinity of livestock—even as current “caught in the act” provisions are already being abused and wolf poaching is on the rise. The result could be potentially catastrophic, adding to annual wolf mortality rates that are already at record highs, and making state wolf recovery even more of a distant dream.
The Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee will hold a public hearing on Senate Bill 5939 at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 18, and we need you to raise your voice before then to make sure this bill does not get beyond the committee.
Please take these steps by noon on Thursday, January 18
1. Register your opposition to SB 5939 before Thursday’s hearing. It takes just a couple minutes to let the committee know that you oppose the wolf baiting bill. Please click here, select your position as “Con,” and enter your name, email, address, state, zip code, and phone number. Hit “Submit.”
2. Submit written testimony. Click here to submit written testimony to the Senate Agriculture Committee prior to Thursday’s hearing. Please reference the talking points below and tell committee members why it is important to you that they oppose SB 5939 and support Washington wolf recovery.
3. Write the sponsors of SB 5939. Some sponsors of SB 5939 seem to be under the mistaken impression that it presents a sensible solution to wolf-livestock conflict. If one of your senators is a sponsor of SB 5939, please write a personal note to explain that it is a reckless measure that would undermine state wolf recovery. The sponsors of SB 5939 are Sens. Keith Wagoner (R-39th), Kevin Van De Wege (D-24th), John Lovick (D-44th), T’wina Nobles (D-28th), and Mark Schoesler (R-9th). Click here to find out if one of these senators represents you and to send them a direct message.
Talking Points: A vote for SB 5939 is a vote against wolf recovery!
- There is no scientific basis for killing the first wolf returning to a predation site. SB 5939 seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of wolf biology, since wolves do not “cache” prey to return later. There is no reason to believe a wolf visiting a predation site was responsible for that predation.
- Leaving dead livestock out to attract carnivores is baiting, which is contrary to every sensible approach to resolving conflicts with livestock. Bait will only draw more carnivores toward the areas where livestock are kept—not only wolves, but also cougars, bear, coyote, and other carnivores.
- The best-available science shows that proactive, non-lethal deterrence measures are the most effective means to prevent wolf-livestock conflict. However, SB 5939 would not require livestock owners to take even the most basic steps to protect their livestock before allowing them to kill wolves.
- The proposal would move the Department of Fish and Wildlife even farther away from a science-based approach to wolf-livestock conflict. Unlike the Department’s current protocol, which Governor Inslee recently instructed the Department to consider enacting as a rule, SB 5939 would not require a minimum number of predations before allowing landowners to kill wolves—or even require the Department to confirm that wolves caused those predations.
- SB 5939 would lead to increased poaching. Last week, Governor Jay Inslee ordered the Department to take action to curb abuse of the provision that allows livestock owners to kill wolves “caught in the act” of attacking livestock. SB 5939 moves in the opposite direction, creating a program to allow livestock owners and their friends to kill wolves in the general vicinity of where livestock used to be—including even in public forests.
- SB 5939 would jeopardize Washington wolf recovery. Human-caused wolf mortality has more than doubled in recent years, with humans killing an average of about 30 wolves a year in the last two years. Even at lower levels of mortality, a population study completed last year estimated that Washington’s wolves would have less than a 50% chance of reaching state recovery goals within the next 50 years. SB 5939 would further increase wolf mortality, eliminating the hope of meaningful wolf recovery and placing the state wolf population in serious danger.