US Fish and Wildlife Service caves in to ranchers
on Mexican Wolves.

4-27-2005, Update 4-28

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed new restrictions on releasing Mexican gray wolves into the wild after complaints from New Mexico ranchers and outfitters.

The restoration of the Mexican wolf, a small sub-species, of the gray wolf, have been hampered from the beginning by the fact that the wolf was totally extinct in the wild and then the further complication that the restoration area was legally limited to a relatively small area on the Arizona-New Mexico border. Unlike the gray wolves of the Northern Rockies who are allowed to wander at will, and are judged by their behavior, not their location, the government actually goes out and relocates back Mexican wolves that successfully move outside this small recovery area even when they are causing no problems with livestock.

I don't write much about Mexican wolves because I don't know the territory, but I do know that ranchers in the area for years have gotten away with their threats of violence against the government, conservationists, and outsiders who don't cater to their cultural hegemony. When will Americans stand up to these bullies?

I wouldn't bother to email USFWS. They are not the real problem. The real problem is that we have a lot of politicians in Washington like Tom DeLay, who have no ethics, and punish government employees who do have ethics.

You might contact the local waterboy for the ranchers US Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M.
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Here is an article about the matter from the Associated Press. April 27, 2005.
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April 28, 2005. Here is more on the matter. The Mexican Wolf Population, low to begin with, is actually declining.

News Release on the cave-in from the Center for Biological Diversity.

POLITICIAN'S INVITATION-ONLY MEETINGS LEAD TO PROPOSED NEW ANTI-WOLF POLICIES
And more Mexican wolves scavenge on livestock carcasses, likely leading to future loss of wolves from declining population

As a result of invitation-only meetings arranged by Rep. Stevan Pearce (R-NM) between ranchers and senior regional officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the agency has proposed a moratorium on new releases of Mexican gray wolves to the wild and new restrictions on where wolves can be re-released after their capture. The moratorium, along with stringent new protocols that would require government killing of more wolves, jeopardizes a population of a reintroduced species whose population has declined because of government predator control actions.
Rep. Pearce's two meetings, held on February 12, 2005 in Socorro and Glenwood, New Mexico, followed four public meetings held in rural communities to discuss the draft Mexican Wolf Five Year Review (released December 2004) that were attended by low level FWS staff. In contrast, Pearce's meetings provided special access for opponents of Mexican wolf recovery to present their point of view to assistant Southwest regional director Larry Bell, acting Southwest deputy regional director Renne Lohoefener, New Mexico state director Joy Nicholopoulos and Mexican wolf recovery coordinator John Morgart. The recovery coordinator is at the low end of this hierarchy but was the highest ranking official at the public meetings.
On January 31, less than two weeks before the Pearce-sponsored meetings, U. S. District Judge Christina Armijo dismissed with prejudice the latest of two livestock industry lawsuits that had sought to have all the Mexican wolves in the wild removed or killed.
"What the livestock industry can't achieve in the federal courts, it is now trying to achieve through blunt political force," said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, in Pinos Altos, New Mexico.
As a result of Pearce's meetings, on April 26 the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a package of changes that include a ban on releasing wolves that had never been in the wild before, limitations on where wolves captured for attacking livestock can be re-released, and inflexible timelines by which wolves would have to be killed or captured by the government in the event of attacks on livestock. The first two items were not proposed in the five year review, and the FWS acknowledges they are a result of Pearce's unpublicized, invitation-only meetings.
The proposed new policies are at http://tinyurl.com/98wuy

"These new policies jeopardize the lobos now on the ground and prevent the needed broadening of the gene pool to address problems caused by past federal captures and killings of wolves," according to Robinson.

According to FWS figures, the number of wild Mexican wolves declined from a known census of 55 wolves at the end of 2003 to 44 wolves at the end of 2004. The FWS had projected prior to initiating the reintroduction program that 68 wolves would survive in the wild at the end of 2004.

The new proposed policies are at odds with recommendations in the Mexican Wolf Three-Year Review (the Paquet Report), conducted by independent scientists, that fewer wolves be captured and killed by the government and that the FWS obtain authority to release wolves in broader areas and allow them to roam at will, just as other endangered species are allowed. Those recommendations, released in June 2001, have not been implemented.

The draft five year review also recommends that wolves be allowed to roam outside political boundaries, and that FWS obtain broader authority on where to release wolves.

The new proposed policies must be approved by the Mexican Wolf Adaptive Management Oversight Committee, consisting of representatives from the Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Animal Damage Control/Wildlife Services, Forest Service, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, Arizona Department of Game and Fish, and White Mountain Apache Tribe.

Meanwhile, in just the past two weeks, two wolf packs and a lone wolf have discovered and fed upon livestock carcasses of animals determined to have died of other causes. The five year review noted a 91% correlation between wolves that scavenge on domestic animals and those that kill domestic animals. The three year review noted the same link, concluded that carcasses served to habituate wolves to livestock, and recommended that ranchers be required to take some responsibility for removing or rendering inedible (as by lime) such carcasses, so as to prevent future conflicts.

The Luna Pack, Ring Pack and lone wolf #859 all recently found cattle carcasses in New Mexico and fed on them, boding ill for their future prospects in the wild. The alpha male of the Ring Pack had scavenged on a cow that he did not kill in August 2003, leading to him and his mate's preying on cattle and being captured in April 2004. They had just been re-released two weeks ago, returned to their previous home range in the Tularosa Mountains north of the Gila Wilderness, and found three cattle carcasses in that area, feeding on at least one of these. Fish and Wildlife Service has limed those carcasses, but the wolves remain in the region and may discover more dead or dying livestock.

"We had hoped that following the wet winter and during this gentle spring, fewer cattle would be dying on our national forests and habituating wolves to regard livestock as a food source," said Robinson.

"If these new policies get approved, the wolves now being taught through their discovery of carcasses to regard cattle as a food source will be at even greater risk of capture and killing, fewer of them will get second chances at freedom, and the population's currently constricted gene pool will not get augmented."



Michael J. Robinson
Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 53166
Pinos Altos, NM 88053
(505) 534-0360 (phone & facsimile)
www.biologicaldiversity.org

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Ralph Maughan
Wolf Recovery Foundation

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