As Executive Director of Michigan Muslim Community Council I am proud and privileged to endorse and serve on the Steering Committee for Keep Michigan Wolves Protected – a coalition of faith leaders, Native American tribes, conservation groups, animal welfare organizations, wildlife scientists, hunters, farmers, and everyday Michigan citizens working to protect Michigan’s wolf population and restore the longstanding rights of voters to have a say in how wolves and other wildlife are managed and respected.

Michigan Muslim Community Council’s executive director, along with the Islamic Society of North America and its president, announced their support of Keep Michigan Wolves Protected and its referendum campaigns to stop the trophy hunting of wolves.

Keep Michigan Wolves Protected submitted more than 229,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office to place a second referendum on the November 4 ballot that would protect wolves and restore the right of Michigan voters to weigh in on critical wildlife issues. Michigan voters from all 83 counties have signed petitions on two ballot referendums expressing their support for the protection of Michigan’s fledging wolf population and displeasure with the Legislature’s approval of wolf hunting and taking their voting rights away.

For the second time, opponents of a hunt of gray wolves in the Upper Peninsula have gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot.

In the 1970s, Michigan's wolves were on the brink of extinction. Poaching and bounties had decimated wolf populations and it looked like they were on a highway to the history books. Fortunately, in an effort to restore the dwindling numbers, wolves were given protected status under the Endangered Species Act. Hunting stopped and the wolf population grew from a measly three animals in 1989 to a healthy estimate of over 650 by 2013.

"We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then and have known ever since that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.” -- Aldo Leopold, 1949