Francisco Pack's alpha male injured during trapping.

Alpha female still targeted for extermination

June 21, 2005, update June 24
 

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I have been following the ordeal of the capture of the Francisco Pack while has engaged in some minor conflicts with livestock. See earlier story.

In other Mexican wolf news, preliminary evidence indicates that Iris pack alpha male AM798, a former Francisco pack wolf, found dead along U. S. Highway 60 near Vernon, AZ, on May 9th, was shot. There is a reward for up to $10,000 for information leading to the apprehension of the person or persons responsible for his death.

Below is a news release from the Center for Biological Diversity on the latest. It seems the US Fish and Wildlife Service has caved into the aggressive ranchers and a wacko right wing congressman in the area. They are taking your comments on their draft Five-Year Review of the Mexican wolf reintroduction program, but don't seem to be waiting before they make revision that are much harder on this tiny wolf population.

Genetic evidence is that the Mexican wolf is the most distinctively different of the several North American sub-species of wolves (except perhaps canis lupis lycaon which might be a different species).

Below is a news release from the Center for Biological Diversity

The wild-born alpha male of the Francisco Pack of Mexican gray wolves was trapped on Saturday morning in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico and his right front leg was broken as he tried to escape from the steel leghold trap.  He underwent initial surgery on Monday and is having his leg amputated today.

His mate, the last wolf still alive and in the wild from amongst the first eleven released into the wild in 1998, is due to be shot next week and their pups taken into captivity.  All five of her pups from a previous litter died as a result of her being taken captive last year, before she was re-released, according to documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity under authority of the Freedom of Information Act.

"We are saddened and outraged by the ongoing destruction of the Francisco Pack," said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, New Mexico, at the edge of the Gila National Forest.  "Today's headlines sound straight out of the 1920s when the goal was extermination."

A lone wolf who has traveled hundreds of miles seeking a mate on the Gila National Forest was also trapped Sunday morning near a cow he killed on a private inholding.

Meanwhile, traps have been set for the alpha male of the Ring Pack, and a decision is expected shortly over whether to kill him.  Yesterday he was in the vicinity of a dead cow thought to have died from eating poisonous plants, and he killed two calves in the same area of the Gila National Forest.  This region, Collins Park, is the same area in which the Francisco Pack was repeatedly drawn by livestock carcasses before they started hunting cattle.

The Francisco Pack male is the second Mexican wolf to lose his leg as a result of a government trap.  The alpha female of the Mule Pack had her leg amputated in January 2000 as a result of a trapping mishap; she was not accused of preying on livestock but was being trapped because she had scavenged on a dead cow and dead horse left on the Apache National Forest in Arizona.  Her leg was cut off because she had developed frostbite due to being left in the trap in winter weather. 

After re-release in March 2000, she wandered alone for the rest of the year, preying or scavenging on natural food sources, but no radio signals have been heard from her since 2000 and her fate is not known.  Her pack was destroyed along with her, as have most of the wolf packs established since the reintroduction program's inception.

The vigorous control program against the Mexican gray wolf has now reduced the number of radio-collared "lobos" to 24 animals almost exactly four years after independent scientists recommended reforms that have been ignored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In late June 2001, when the Paquet Report was released, there were 27 radio collared wolves in the wild in the Southwest.

The Paquet Report, which constituted the official Three-Year Review of the reintroduction program, was named for Canadian wolf biologist Paul C. Paquet, Ph.D, who led a team of four non-governmental scientists who specialize in carnivores and population demography.  The report warned that more wolves must be allowed to live out their lives if recovery was to be achieved, and recommended that ranchers be required to take some responsibility for removing or rendering unpalatable (as by lime) livestock carcasses before wolves scavenge on them and become habituated.

The rules for the reintroduction program for wolves in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho prohibit control actions against wolves that attack livestock where carcasses have drawn the wolves in.  That reintroduction program, which began in 1995, has been a success; over 700 wolves now roam the northern Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.  But no such protections from carcasses apply to Mexican gray wolves.

The Fish and Wildlife Service's draft Five-Year Review of the Mexican wolf reintroduction program, released in December 2004, states that 91% of the wolves known to have scavenged on livestock carcasses are also eventually involved in livestock depredations.

The government poisoned and trapped wolves from the West in the early 20th Century.  In 1950 the Fish and Wildlife Service began sending government-produced poison and American salaried personnel to Mexico to exterminate wolves south of the border, and continued killing Mexican wolves until President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law at the end of 1973. 

Between 1977 and 1980 the five wild Mexican wolves were trapped alive in Mexico for an emergency captive breeding program.  No more have since been documented south of the border, and the species is assumed extirpated there.

In 1986, the Fish and Wildlife Service identified the Mexican gray wolf as the most endangered mammal in North America, and in 1998 a reintroduction program began into southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

"This is a control program masquerading as a recovery program," said Robinson. 

"The Fish and Wildlife Service has begun implementing its new, aggressive control protocol even before the public comment period has closed," Robinson pointed out.  "If the agency had listened to the scientists instead of the livestock industry, the Mexican gray wolf would be well on its way to recovery by now."

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

Tucson & Phoenix, AZ  • Denver, CO  • San Diego, Idyllwild & San Francisco, CA  • Portland, OR  • Pinos Altos, NM

Recently hearings were held on the wolf program in Reserve, NM, county seat of notorious Catron County where public officials believe that don't have to live by the rules that govern other folks. Their mean spirited comments got a lot of media attention. On the other hand, hearings in Silver City and Albuquerque were much more pro-wolf.

Here is a news story about the Catron County ranchers. "Catron ranchers want wolf program eliminated." Tania Soussan The Albuquerque Journal. Special To El Defensor Chieftain.

Here is a more balanced story on MSNBC. Gila wolves clash with cows, fuel debate over reintroduction effort
By Paul Krza. New Mexico Business Weekly.

And this. Animal activists fire back in defense of wolves. Arizona Daily Sun. June 20, 2005.

It is very important that the Mexican wolves allowed outside the boundary prison set up for them under 10j rule when they were reintroduced. They should be able roam like successful reintroduction of wolves in Idaho and Wyoming (Yellowstone).

You can comment on these proceedings. Please insist that your opinion is as important as any rancher. Their lost livestock to this small wolf are compensated by Defenders. I am not impressed by talk of grisly attacks on cattle. What do they think hamburger is? It's not plant material unless it's a soyburger.

Here is the information on the comment period/hearings.

Update 6-24-05. AF511 has been captured alive and without injury. This wolf, who was the poster for Arizona Fish and Game, will never be returned to the wild, a sad commentary to the state of the Mexican wolf program.

Opinion. Guest opinion column in the Arizona Daily Star. "Killing of gray wolves an outdated solution." By Michael J. Robinson.

Update 7-4-2004. Wildlife Services has shot the alpha male of the Ring Pack. After learning the cattle were food from eating a dead cow left by a rancher over the next couple years this wolf killed or help kill 4 head of cattle. He was an especially important wolf because he had genes from all 3 of the rare Mexican wolf linages. With the dismantlement of the Francisco Pack and the Ring Pack, there are only 7 breeding pairs of Mexican wolf left in the wild. The original EIS had predicted there would be 15 pairs of Mexican wolves this far along in the program. The remaining public hearings on the future of the Mexican wolf were much in favor of giving the wolf more freedom to roam and keep reintroducing captive wolves into the wild, but USFWS seems to have already made up their minds.

With all the celebration about the restoration of the gray wolf to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming with the numbers higher than predicted, the media should call attention to the government's failure with the much rarely Mexican wolf.

According to the draft Five-Year Review of the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program, released in December 2004, 91% of wolves that scavenged carcasses of cattle or horses in the first five years of the reintroduction program -- from 1998 to 2003 -- ended up killing livestock.