Welcome to The War on Wildlife, a chilling look at a global crisis where animals face not only habitat destruction and climate-fueled fires, but deliberate, state-sanctioned eradication. Across the globe, human aggression toward wild species has reached an alarming fever pitch.

In Colorado, Colorado Amendment 83 threatens to enshrine hunting and fishing as constitutional "preferred means" of wildlife management, potentially rolling back historic bans on brutal practices like leghold traps and spring bear hunting.

Meanwhile, on California's Catalina Island, innocent deer face ongoing slaughter—despite warnings from the local fire chief that losing the grass-grazing animals could dangerously increase wildfire fuel for the island's residents.

Federal policies are equally bleak. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Barred Owl Management Strategy has finalized a controversial plan to slaughter up to 500,000 barred owls across the Pacific Northwest. Critics argue this massive slaughter serves as a smokescreen to appease the timber industry and expand logging in old-growth forests. Add to this the taxpayer-funded roundup of wild horses bound for foreign slaughterhouses, and it is clear our sixth mass extinction is being accelerated by human design with the help of our own tax dollars, despite the opposition of millions of American animal lovers.

What is wrong with our species?

To unpack this war on nature, meet Roland Halpern of Colorado Voters for Animals, Jack Gescheidt, head of Tree Spirit Project and consultant to In Defense of Animals and prominent ecologist and botanist Delia Malone with UnchainedTV’s Jane Velez-Mitchell.