Today’s FFFA is less light-hearted than usual — but how could anyone, in good conscience, write a romantic lead who’s a werewolf and not try to do their part in spreading the word about the protection of real wolf species?

The following text comes on behalf of http://www.savewolves.org:

As the new head of Defenders of Wildlife’s legal team, I’m getting ready to fly to Missoula, Montana for Monday’s hearing in federal court on our motion to stop the wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana.

Before I leave, I want to personally send my sincere thanks to the more than 27,000 Defenders supporters who have sent emails or called the White House in the last 24 hours and the more than 3,000 people who have supported our legal efforts with emergency donations to the Campaign to Save America’s Wolves.

On Monday, we’ll have just a few hours to convince a federal judge to stop irresponsible wolf hunts in Idaho (scheduled to begin Tuesday!) and Montana (scheduled to start September 15th). Unless we prevail, hundreds of wolves could be killed with many pups left orphaned to starve to death over the cold winter months.

As we prepare for Monday’s fight, Defenders of Wildlife is also mobilizing activists in Idaho and Montana — and across America — to save the lives of these wolves. To succeed, we’ll need your help.

Please make an emergency donation now to help support our efforts to save these wolves and other imperiled animals.

I’m proud of what Defenders of Wildlife has accomplished for America’s wolves over the years.

With the help of caring people like you, Defenders of Wildlife helped lead the fight to restore wolves to the northern Rockies. Since then, our on-the-ground conservation work has been reducing local conflicts between wolves and livestock producers. And, with the help of caring wildlife supporters like you, last year the Defenders legal team and our allies were able to stop the out-of-control killing of wolves in Wyoming and restore vital protections for wolves in that state.

But now we face an even greater challenge as Idaho and Montana gear up to eliminate hundreds of wolves through hunting and other means.

Idaho plans to sell an outrageous 70,000 permits to hunt and kill as many as 220 of the estimated 1,000 wolves in the state, with Montana allowing as many as 75 wolves to be hunted in that state. And that’s just this year!

Under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf delisting rule, Idaho and Montana are free to reduce the wolf population down to 150 per state — potentially killing roughly two-thirds of the wolves in the northern Rockies and Greater Yellowstone region.

The future of wolves in the northern Rockies and Greater Yellowstone may well rest on our actions in the next few days. Please help support our court fight and other efforts to save wolves.

With Gratitude,

Mike Senatore
Vice President, Conservation Law
Defenders of Wildlife

P.S. To support our work on behalf of wolves at this critical time, please make a secure donation online or call 1-800-385-9712 to make a contribution over the phone.

I have seen one wild wolf in my lifetime, and it was an extraordinarily surreal experience.

Now that I think about it, it probably had a lot of impact on my view of them as being almost mythical creatures unto themselves, very ethereal and scary and beautiful.

Growing up, I lived in a suburban subdivision that bordered a nature preserve on one edge and a small area of marshland on the other.

The marshland was very tamed — lots of fallen trees made bridges across the small creek, high schoolers like myself would trek through it to the soccer field to make out, the largest animals I’d ever seen there were some pennytoads.

The forest preserve fence didn’t have any holes in it, so I’d never been there.

However, every once in a great while, someone would see deer tracks across the snow in their backyard in winter, or rumors of a coyote eating neighborhood cats would ripple through the neighborhood.

It was never a big deal.

One gray, foggy morning my Sophomore year of high school, I stood on the corner at the bus stop, waiting for my neighbors Andrew and Paul to arrive, and I noticed something amiss in the dense mist.

Sitting back on its haunches right in the middle of Andrew’s front yard was an enormous gray wolf.

It stood up, circled itself once, and sat back down again in the same spot, docilely watching Andrew’s front door.

And I stood across the street, staring at it through the fog, appreciating nature for the first time in my life.

Andrew hid inside his foyer until he nearly missed the bus, waiting for the wolf to leave his path, trotting out into the backyard instead.  His mother called the Humane Society to pick it up, and for some reason I recall that it wasn’t from the preserve, but was actually MIA from one of Chicago’s zoos.

I’m not certain whether that’s true or a local legend, but either way, the wolf was peaceful and beautiful and I thought about it all that day, even after boarding the bus and leaving the subdivision.