St. Petersburg, Florida — On Saturday, January 31, people will gather from 4-8pm at Straub Park in downtown St. Petersburg to protest the aerial-shooting of wolves in Alaska and support a travel boycott to that state. Including St. Petersburgh, 57 Howl-Ins have been organized across the United States since December 27-28 2003, when FoA called for a travel boycott of Alaska. Joining the St. Petersburg protests this weekend will be Howl-Ins in Las Vegas, Sitka, Alaska, Youngstown, Ohio, and Corvallis, Oregon.

The work of Friends of Animals and over 70 other groups like Federal Wolf-Dog Rescue has inspired countless letters, calls and faxes, and 60,000 of FoA’s postcards have been distributed and mailed to Governor Murkowski, who is responsible for the wolf-shooting plan. The postcards include a pledge that the signer will not travel to Alaska until the wolf “control” plan is cancelled.

Only lack of daylight is delaying the aerial wolf-shooters from tracking wolves down, and as the days get longer, these teams will have better opportunities to kill wolves near McGrath and in the Nelchina basin regions in Alaska. The knowledge that wolves will be killed in February and March keeps activists engaged, putting economic pressure on Governor Murkowski’s administration, a previously successful tactic organized by FoA that resulted in a 10-year moratorium of state-sponsored wolf “control” programs.