He limped around in circles, desperately searching for a way to escape the heavy metal trap with steel jaws that cut into his paw and sent pain shooting through his body. A crowd of people was forming, pointing at the blood in the snow, graphic evidence of the potshots taken by passing hunters who had spotted the wolf from the road, his black fur an easy target against the white snow. The wolf struggled to stay on his feet, panting in agony and trying in vain to escape his tormenters. When the trapper arrived, instead of putting the anguished animal out of his misery, the man posed for proud, smiling pictures in the blood-drenched snow. He later bragged on a blog about how the wolf would make a nice trophy for his wall.

Cruel torture killings like this one have played out over and over in Idaho and Montana ever since grey wolves in the Northern Rockies lost the protection of the Endangered Species Act in 2011. In the past wolf-hunting season alone, 534 wolves were trapped, snared, and/or shot, cutting the estimated grey wolf population in the two states in half.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region | cc by 2.0

Despite vigorous opposition from PETA and ranchers, grey wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995. We predicted that as soon as the wolves' numbers grew and they began preying on livestock and deer and elk (which the hunters want for themselves), the pressure would mount to exterminate them. Less than two decades later, that is happening.

Please, ask your congressional representatives to put wolves back on the endangered species list and save them from being tortured and killed by trappers and hunters.

I just wanted to give you a quick update on the sealers trapped in the ice in Newfoundland.

Well, it turns out that there are still hundreds of hunters trapped, and now they’re starting to run out of food, water and fuel. The Canadian coast guard is working hard to rescue them before it’s too late. Now I don’t wish suffering on anyone, not even callous hunters who cruelly kill baby seals who are too young to even swim or get away, but the good news here is that since so many hunters have been stuck for so long, it looks like they’re going to come up around 60,000 seal pups short of their quota this year, which means that a whole bunch more of these cute little dudes will actually get to grow up . . . and that, of course, is a very good thing!

Is it me or is the karmic irony in this story almost too much to handle? Check out this ABC News piece for the full report.

I could seriously sit here all day trying to muster up sympathy for these guys and not succeed. Since that's probably not going to happen, I'll just give you the details of the story instead (I will make every effort not to be gleeful about it). Apparently, more than 100 seal-hunting boats became trapped in an ice-pack yesterday and are still waiting for help from Canada's Coast Guard icebreakers. The London Times reported on the story this morning, and you can read more about that here. Maybe a couple of days waiting to get rescued will give them some time to reflect on the large-scale misery they had been planning on inflicting over the next few weeks. Here's a picture of the boats trapped in the ice fields, which, as much as being stuck in inclement weather probably sucks, it doesn't even begin to compare with the horrors these profiteers had in store for their victims.