Wyoming considers slight change to law allowing wolves to be killed with vehicles

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to News@lemmy.world – 92 points –
apnews.com

Outrage over how a man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped the injured animal’s mouth shut and brought it into a bar has resulted in a proposal to tweak Wyoming’s animal cruelty law to apply to people who legally kill wolves by intentionally running them over.

Under draft legislation headed to a legislative committee Monday, people could still intentionally run over wolves but only if the animal is killed quickly, either upon impact or soon after.

Wyoming’s animal cruelty law is currently written to not apply at all to predators such as wolves. The proposed change would require a person who hits a wolf that survives to immediately use “all reasonable efforts” to kill it.

The bill doesn’t specify how a surviving wolf is to be killed after it is intentionally struck.

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WTF Wyoming? Animal cruelty should be illegal in all forms. Vehicles are for transport, not mowing down the wildlife. If you have a wolf population problem, there are better ways of handling it.

Would it not be easier to outlaw deliberately running over animals? Would seem like the non-psychopathic thing to do.

I know there are reasons to allow targeted hunting of wolves in some areas. I don't know if I agree with the reasons, but I'm also not a rancher in that area and don't know the full impact on either side of the issue.

However, I feel like intentionally running over any animal is a step in the wrong direction.

yeah what the fuck, how could that possibly ever be safe for anyone or anything.

i was generally under the impression that it was illegal to intentionally hit anything with your vehicle without consent. i just never checked because I've never wanted to hit something with my car.

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You might be a redneck if you run over a wolf with a snowmobile and then bring it into a fucking bar...

Congrats to the wolves for getting the same treatment as humans.

#bancars

If you put a back slash before your # like such: \# it won't make the text big

bancars

Setting aside whether that's a reasonable position to take, the vehicle here is a snowmobile.

The proposed change would require a person who hits a wolf that survives to immediately use “all reasonable efforts” to kill it.

That sounds unreasonable if it's unqualified.

There are legitimate, if fringe, reasons that you might want to hit a wolf but not kill it. Say the thing is chasing down someone and you hit it with a snowmobile. But in this hypothetical case, unlike the situation above, it's not seriously injured and heads off in another direction. Imposing a legal obligation to make every effort to personally kill the thing at that point seems unreasonable.

At the least, I'd think that this should only apply to predators that are obviously seriously injured.