The local population is furious with Wyoming Actors after they refused to forbid people in the wild with snowmobiles and other vehicles without deliberate wildlife.
State politicians try to respond to global indignation about photos that originated last year of a Wyoming man who tortured a wolf after he had hit it with his snowmobile.
In February 2024, Cody Roberts parade the wounded Wolf around a bar in Daniel, a small town near Bridger-Teton National Forest.
A smiling Roberts even posed for a photo next to the miserable animal, seen with duct tape wrapped around the snout before he pulled it behind the bar and killed it.
Further indignation followed when it came to light that Roberts received only $ 250 for the violation, which was considered the illegal possession of a living, warm -blooded animal.
An online petition that requires Roberts to be confronted with a heavier punishment has more than 26,000 signatures. A separate petition that calls for the strengthening of the laws for abusing animals in the wild has more than 25,000 signatures.
Spokeswoman Jess Johnson, Wyoming Wildlife Federation, said what Roberts did 'came up again' during a conference on wolves she recently attended in Arizona almost a year after the incident.
“So we have to do something,” Johnson told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
In February 2024, Cody Roberts won a wounded wolf after beating him with his snowmobile. He then paraded the animal around a local bar before he killed it
This week, certain members of the Staatshuis of representatives voted unanimously to put the Bill 275 house on the ground.
In its current form, the measure prohibits the intentional extension of the suffering of an animal, but does not explicitly forbid people to run animals with vehicles – a practice that is generally known as 'hitting' or 'puree'.
“Why can't we place something in an account that stops the use of motorized, over-the-ground vehicles and over-snow vehicles that are used as a weapon to kill animals in the wild, including predators?” Republican representative Mike Schmid said to the Huis Travel, Recreation, Wildlife & Cultural Resources Committee on Tuesday.
Sylvia Bagdonas from Laramie, a city near the border with Colorado, also testified in front of the committee.
Bagdonas also thinks that predators run down with snowmobiles, by definition cruel, therefore it must be prohibited.
An earlier form of the bill written by the committee made it a crime to allow a predatory animal to suffer, even in the first violation.
The committee is said to be mentioned by Wyoming Game and Fish Department Chief of Wildlife Dan Smith.
Smith said it would be better to give game guards, law enforcement officers who protect animals in the wild, the power to treat every attack on a case-by-case basis.
And there are people who believe that an out-and-out moratorium about the use of vehicles to pursue predators would go too far.
Managers who represent farmers say that snowmobms are a crucial tool for predator control, so animals such as wolves do not hunt their cattle (depicted: tourists drive snowmobiles on a path in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming)
A gray male wolf stalking prey in Yellowstone National Park
Among them is Jim Magagna, the Executive Vice President of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.
He explained that farmers trust vehicles to remove predators, especially Coyotes, from their country before they move their cattle.
And while Magagna condemned what happened to the Wolf in Daniel, he pointed out that wolves themselves can be quite cruel for cattle and sheep on farms.
“They torture, they molest them, they let them half dead and half alive,” said Magagna.
Alison Crane, executive director of the Woool Growers Association, shared similar sentiments and said that a ban could unintentionally have a horrifying effect on combating ranchers.
Commission member Liz Storer, a Democrat, proposed an amendment in the bill that would have imposed, predators would be killed in a 'humane' way, regardless of how they are killed.
Other committee members said that even that was too vague, where the Republican representative Robert Wharff said it would be difficult to enforce and lead to charges against people who were not going to make animals suffer.
Representative Karlee Provenza, a Democrat, said that she received phone calls last year from hundreds of her voters regarding the Wolf incident in Daniel.
She said she understood why some believe that the bill is not going far enough, even saying that she was 'torn' about how to proceed.
But in the end she voted 'Aye' to send the measure to the house floor, reasoning that it is better to do something than nothing at all.
