The United States Fish and Wildlife Service will soon propose a law that removes the gray wolf from the endangered species list throughout the continental US. The new law will allow each state to choose what they want to do with the wolves. They can determine whether the wolf can be hunted or culled.

The wolves started to be protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1978. Their population declined due to their prey population dropping in numbers. In 2011, the gray wolf population grew in Montana and Idaho. Now the population has increased to a healthy number of 5,500 in the contiguous states.

There has been a severe backlash to this news. Conservationists are enraged with this new law proposition. It could allow for individual states to legalize wolf hunting which would be excruciatingly damaging to both the wolf populous and the American ecosystem as a whole.

This is where the problem arises. The gray wolves are so close to being removed from the endangered species list. Conservationists have been fighting day after day to save the wolves, and now the Wildlife Service is proposing a law that will not only undo their progress but bring even more devastation to the environment and disruption to the food chain. They have just been saved from extinction and now we are going to let the possibility of hunting and killing them happen? How is that fair?  How do we get to choose which animals get to live and which we kill off?

Natural selection is one thing, but the inhumane slaughter of an entire species is another matter entirely. Just because these species may be lower on the food chain than us does not mean we are given the right to exterminate them. They have every reason to be on this earth. Eliminating other species because we enjoy their skin, fur, tusks, etc. is disgusting and downright cruel.

As fellow creatures on this earth, we have to respect this planet and the other creatures. Destroying it is useless. Do we want this planet to die at a faster rate because of our selfish wants?