Cody Roberts Indicted

Nearly eighteen months ago, we learned of an act of cruelty so outside the bounds of acceptable human behavior that it shook me to the core and shocked tens of millions of other Americans in the same way. A man named Cody Roberts chased down a young female wolf—later named Theia, after the Greek goddess of light—with a snowmobile in Sublette County, Wyo. Crushed and mortally wounded but still hanging on, Theia was then taken captive by Roberts, who taped her mouth shut, tormented her at home, and paraded her into a local bar for ridicule and photos.

From the beginning, officials with the Wyoming Department of Fish and Wildlife claimed Roberts violated no laws with his conduct.

We refused to accept that legal interpretation.

Our legal team at Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy issued a detailed legal analysis showing that Wyoming’s hunting exemptions did not shield Cody Roberts from prosecution because his deliberate torment of Theia occurred after she was already subdued and helpless. We made our case to Sublette County Prosecutor Clayton Melinkovich, who seemed to understand the arguments we made.

But with no action over the course of more than a year, it seemed like a case of “justice delayed is justice denied.” Yesterday, though, a Sublette County grand jury, composed of Roberts’ neighbors and other community members, returned an indictment against him on felony charges of animal cruelty.

The wheels of justice have started to turn again—and not a moment too soon. This preliminary action in a case that now moves to its next stage is a testament to persistence and the power of moral indignation. It’s a testament to the faith all of us placed in the citizens of Wyoming to do the right thing, even in the face of equivocation and vacillation from some politicians in the state. Special credit goes to Mr. Melinkovich and the grand jurors who moved ahead with the indictment.

Theia’s torment still reverberates, including for other wolves

The tragic story of Theia’s torment was always about more than one wolf. It was also about policies in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana that show special contempt and mercilessness to wolves—the forebears of domesticated dogs who enrich our lives and whose companionship and loyalty bring us comfort.

It was inconceivable to me that Wyoming allowed men to run down wild canines with snowmobiles and crush them for sport. That’s why we worked last year with members of Congress to introduce the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons (SAW) Act, which would make it a federal crime to use motorized vehicles to chase down and kill wolves on federal lands. We expect to see the reintroduction of this urgently needed legislation in September, with the prosecution of Cody Roberts reminding political leaders in Washington, D.C. that decent people in a rural ranching community in western Wyoming believe that running over a wolf for the thrill of it is wrong and intolerable.

The larger battles for wolves

Just weeks ago, we secured a major legal victory in federal court. In a sweeping 105-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illegally denied protections to gray wolves in the western United States. He rebuked the agency for “acting on an anti-predator narrative, not science,” and agreed with us and other plaintiffs that state policies in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana have resurrected the same persecution responsible for wolves’ near extinction a century ago.

These are scorched-earth policies at work across the Northern Rockies, where wolves are treated as pests rather than as an iconic species of the American landscape. Theia’s ordeal put a face and a name to this larger pattern of cruelty.

The absence of any guardrails for wolves in these states reminds us that demonizing these creatures must end. These extraordinary animals bring ecological benefits to western ecosystems and economic activity to gateway communities near the borders of our national parks. Yes, on rare occasions, wolves do kill sheep and calves, and we hate to see that, too. We sympathize with the ranchers and the domesticated animals, and we want to be sure safeguards are in place to prevent it from happening to the greatest extent possible.

But rare attacks on livestock are no excuse for a license to kill wolves. Under the pretense of “marauding wolves,” Congress may soon take up H.R. 845, introduced by Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and S. 1306, introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., to remove federal protections for wolves across their range outside of the Northern Rockies.

After the delisting experiment in the Northern Rockies failed so badly—as evinced by Judge Molloy’s rebuke of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which allowed those states to run wild with extreme anti-wolf policies—we should not replicate that same politically driven delisting for wolves in other states. Doing so would only put more wolves at risk from states that aren’t acting rationally on wolf management.

Let’s celebrate this indictment of Roberts. But let’s also remember what we must do to protect wolves in the wild right now from being chased down with dogs and snowmobiles, snared by the neck, and hunted with the aid of night-vision goggles.

There are about 6,000 wolves across tens of millions of acres in the West and Midwest. That’s about as many wolves as there are human residents of the small rural town of Ranchette, Wyo. If those 6,000 residents were scattered across tens of millions of acres in 20 states, census takers could miss them, and nobody would even notice.

Put in that context, we are talking about a relative handful of wolves in a vast nation of 330 million people—a vestige of their former numbers before European settlement of the continent.

Though they number so few, every one of them counts, certainly by the measure of the Maker. Can we let these animals have some running room and stop spewing hate toward them? They are part of Earthly creation.