Good News, Bad News: Cody Roberts Facing Grand Jury Proceeding, But Wolves at Risk from Irrational Expressions of Hatred and Malice

 In February 2024, a man in Wyoming committed an act of cruelty so malicious that a wave of moral outrage rolled across the globe.

Cody Roberts, a resident of Daniel, Wyo., ran down an adolescent female gray wolf with a snowmobile, taped her mouth shut, paraded her through a local bar, and then hours later, took the grievously injured animal out back to kill her.

Posthumously, we named her Theia for the Goddess of Light, and we have endeavored to shine a light on the savage attack and, in her name, work to prevent future attacks of malice toward other wolves.

According to reporting this week by Wyofile, Sublette County authorities have convened a grand jury to consider criminal charges against Roberts. This is a rare move in Wyoming, where grand juries are seldom used, but the severity and public impact of this case warrant it.

For now, all we can do about this case is remain hopeful that justice may be on the horizon at last. The matter is in the hands of the grand jury.

But there’s plenty more we can do to help wolves made of the same fur and sinew as Theia. There’s so much at stake for them right now. We must channel our outrage about the Roberts case and focus our energies on protecting wolves at risk right now.

Wolves Are Being Crushed, Snared, and Hounded in the Northern Rockies

In the Northern Rockies, the war on wolves has spiraled into a state-sanctioned bloodbath. Wolf families there are in disarray, battered, and assaulted by men with an array of steel-jawed traps and neck snares, packs of dogs, and even snowmobiles that they use to crush the animals.

Last month, our legal team was in federal court seeking to restore Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. We argued that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has turned its back on science and on the law. In 2009, the agency promised to restore protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies if state lawmakers and wildlife managers acted recklessly. In light of the no-limits approach to killing wolves in those states today, the federal government has reneged on its 2009 promise by denying our petition to restrain the states.

State lawmakers, with tacit federal approval, are permitting year-round, unlimited trapping. They are allowing trophy hunters to use night-vision scopes to kill wolves 24/7. They are even allowing animal abusers to run them down and crush them with motorized vehicles. And they pay bounties for bringing back a dead wolf.

To be sure, these are not sensible or measured wildlife management policies. This is an all-out war on wolves.

We are awaiting a ruling from a federal judge in this case. Without the restoration of federal protections, wolves face a continuing assault that leaves a trail of death and misery.

We Are Still Fighting to Protect Wolves from Michigan to Washington

We can win this case in the Northern Rockies. Just as we did in 2021 when we secured a courtroom injunction against wolf killing in a state court in Wisconsin when the state unleashed a horde of trophy hunters and trappers who slaughtered over 200 wolves in under 60 hours.

And just a year later, 2022, in another crucial legal battle for wolf protection across the rest of their range in the lower 48 states, we prevailed in a second key case. In a U.S. District Court in northern California, we successfully blocked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from removing federal Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across the entire country (except for the already exploited population in the Northern Rockies).

That case is on appeal, and we are still working on holding the line.

And holding the line also requires us to defeat H.R. 845, the so-called “Pet and Livestock Protection Act, and its Senate companion measure, S. 1306 in Congress that would legislatively remove federal Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across their range. Cases of wolf predation on livestock are proportionately very rare, and there are other ways of deterring those incidents than random shooting or trapping of wolves. Guard dogs and other site-specific deterrents are much more effective than scattershot killing of wolves with no history of killing livestock or pets.

And we are also taking the offense.

We will once again advocate for the Snowmobiles Are Not Weapons (SAW) Act, poised for introduction in the U.S. House this fall — a legislative formulation triggered by the Cody Roberts incident.

The nation has a federal Airborne Hunting Act to forbid people from chasing down wolves and other wildlife from planes and other aircraft and terrorizing and killing them. We need a national policy that forbids running them down with vehicles. Despite their strong cultural tradition of hunting, several states already have such wildlife policies in place, including Colorado, Minnesota, and Oregon. But a national standard is needed since Wyoming and a few other states have taken a totally unregulated Wild West approach.

Demonizing Animals Is Precursor to Human Exploitation

People often demonize animals to justify hurting them. We are seeing that with the North American barred owls, who are being called “bullies” and “invaders” by some environmental organizations just because they are adapting to human effects on the environment, living their lives, and competing with other owls. That’s not bullying or an invasion — it’s nature.

Competition, predation, and life and death are the daily doings of animals in ecological systems. When we humans upend nature, we often compound the damage by blaming the animals for acting on their instincts.

When it comes to wolves, the demonization is a longer-running smear campaign. Some ranchers and trophy hunters call them “bloodthirsty killers” or “vermin” or “murderers.”

We see these wild canines very differently.

Wolves gave humans the gift of dogs in our lives. It was the association of humans with wolves that resulted in the domestication of the dog that forever changed the human story. Dogs have been our faithful companions and give us so much joy, as well as serving roles in guarding, herding, and in law enforcement and military service.

Wolves are also essential to healthy ecosystems. They are a bulwark against the spread of a brain-wasting disease — known as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) — infecting deer and elk in the West and the Upper Midwest. Where there are wolves, there is far less spread of CWD, because the wolves selectively remove afflicted animals, preventing further spread of the disease.

And wolves, by exerting influence on prey populations, reduce densities of deer and elk and reduce the frequency of auto collisions with these animals. That same steady pressure on prey populations reduces the cervids’ impact on crops and commercial forests.

The wolves are the best wildlife managers we could find, having evolved over the eons with their prey species. And they are intelligent, family-oriented animals who deserve respect and protection. They feel pain and suffering just like dogs do.

Your support allows us to fight for them, whether it involves bringing legal action in the federal courts, making our case in the court of public opinion, or fighting to block wolf delisting in Congress.