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A Mexican gray wolf. PHOTO COURTESY U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE.
Politics, not science, guiding decisions on additional wolf releases in the Southwest, as livestock industry continues knee jerk opposition
By Bob Berwyn
SUMMIT COUNTY — This week’s sanctioned shooting of an endangered Mexican gray wolf — at the direction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — highlights some of the major problems with the stuttering effort to restore a viable self-sustaining population of the predators in the desert Southwest.
“This very sad episode is a result of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s refusal to release enough wolves into the wild to allow this single female to find a mate of her own kind,” said Michael Robinson, a wolf restoration advocated with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Only about 50 wolves remain in the wild, with only two known reproducing pairs, and during the Obama administration not a single wolf has been released from the captive breeding facilities where biologists are trying to ensure healthy genetic diversity in the struggling wild population. Visit this USFWS website to see all the documents relating to the recovery effort.
The lone 4-year-old female wolf was reportedly attracted to a private residence within the Gila National Forest, where she consorted with domestic dogs The wolf was shot Wednesday as a purported threat to human safety.
The wolves are classified as a non-essential experimental population, which gives wildlife managers wide leeway to kill wolves deemed to be a threat.
But Robinson said he’s not willing to take the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at its word in this case.
“We’ll be filing a Freedom of Information Act request to try and determine the exact circumstances,” Robinson said.
There’s good reason for the skepticism on his part, as some livestock and ranching interests have all but vowed to eliminate wolves from the area — even as cattle losses have dropped to very low levels.
Earlier this year the same wolf had mated with a dog elsewhere and given birth to five hybrid pups, four of which were captured and euthanized; the fifth has not been found.
The 1996 environmental impact statement on reintroducing Mexican wolves to the wild addressed potential hybridization and promised to minimize it in part through “reestablishing wolf populations in numbers sufficient that potential wolf mates are available for dispersing wolves.” But this has not occurred.
The document projected that by the end of 2006, 102 wolves, including 18 breeding pairs, would live in the wild, with the numbers expected to continue to rise after that.
A 2001 scientific review concluded that the recovery area spanning the Arizona and New Mexico border had sufficient deer and elk to be able to support 468 wolves. Yet the highest number of wolves counted was 59 in 2006; at the end of 2010, only 50 wolves, including just two breeding pairs, could be found in the wild.
Despite this shortfall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has only released a single wolf from the captive breeding program in the past five years (in Nov. 2008), along with 11 wolves captured from the wild in previous years.
Dozens of other wolves were captured and have been indefinitely locked up (and 11 other wolves were shot by the government for livestock depredations, though none in the past four years). Today, 12 once-wild wolves are biologically suitable and legally eligible for release into New Mexico.
“This lonesome wolf did not have to die,” said Robinson. “If there were enough potential mates for her to choose from, this social creature wouldn’t have desperately sought the company of domestic dogs. “To ensure another wolf doesn’t pay the same price, the Obama administration must release more wolves into the wild.”
Mexican gray wolves have been on the endangered species list since 1976, just three years after the Endangered Species Act was passed by Congress.
Filed under: biodiversity, endangered species, Environment, Summit County news Tagged: | biodiversity, Center for Biological Diversity, endangered species act, Environment, Summit County News, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, wildlife
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There are only about 50 Mexican gray wolves (“lobos”) in the wilds of New Mexico and Arizona–not enough to ensure their survival. More than 300 lobos are in captivity, waiting to be released into the wild as part of a reintroduction program. Releasing wolves directly into New Mexico–where the best remaining unoccupied habitat exists–is critical to quickly boosting numbers and gene diversity in the wild population, but for bureaucratic reasons the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) won’t do it, citing an outdated rule that prevents direct releases into New Mexico. The FWS could easily change this rule by issuing an Environmental Assessment and putting it out for public review, but it refuses to do so. Tell the FWS to take action before it’s too late for Mexican wolves. Please sign our petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/tell-us-fish-and-wildlife-service-release-mexican-wolves-into-new-mexico-before-its-too-late/
This is another example of human over run of the environment. The livestock industry can afford to lobby, while the environment gets the short end of the deal. If the ranchers did their job, then there wouldn’t be the problems they site. But they are used to getting their way, and damn be the animal that dares step in the path. The FWS should know better than to fall prey to this behavior, as well as the “O”! But then, animals don’t vote, so they don’t count.
This is the result of the wolf reintroduction in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Wolves have exceeded the cultural carrying capacity from the get go, until people who actually live in the affected areas want wolves in their midst it’s folly to force them on anyone
The wolves were here long before we were!!! I think maybe we owe them a living.
agreed. Unfortunately, humans have continually taken habitat away from the animals, boxing them into smaller & smaller parcels of land. Now, the O & G adventures are knocking on the door, which will further limit the habitat. IMHO, the one who shot the Wolf, should be fired, with prejudice. It’s mans ego that is destroying the Earth, not the animals.
Extinct varieties might have been but I think it’s widely believed the current gray wolf like in Canada, Alsaska, and N Rocky Mountains arrived in the late Rancholabrean due to the dire wolf dying out and the native Americans hunting the large mega fauna to extinction.
I’d also say that the gray wolf still occupies well over half it’s original habitat, and the species is one of the most widespread and successful of mammals. I can think of no more authoritative source than the IUCN, can you?
I always roll my eyes when I see a statement such as, Politics, not science, guiding decisions on additional wolf releases in the Southwest, as livestock industry continues knee jerk opposition.
Please, EVERYTHING that enviros do is political. The advocacy groups cherry-pick the science they agree with and refuse to accept the science they don’t agree with. Above all, they don’t accept the fact that science still has to be filtered through the numerous aspects of reality.
Most mainstream conservationists would like to see a sustainable population of Mexican wolves on the ground as part of an ecologically balanced system. But that can’t be at the exclusion of human considerations, including ranchers and hunters. And it can’t be at the exclusion of impacts to other wildlife populations, such as deer and elk. The advocates can vilify the “livestock industry” all they like, but the fact remains that they are residents whose concerns deserve to be addressed just as much as the concerns of urban environmental advocates who don’t have to live with wolves in their area.
You have a good point — several, actually — but that doesn’t change the fact that we have an endangered species law that requires certain things. Overall, as a country, we’ve decided that maintaining and restoring healthy ecosystems with viable populations of native plants and animals, is important.
Let’s try and follow the best available science to reach that goal.
Yes, there is some cherry picking on both sides, but from my viewpoint, it’s especially egregious from the extractive side.
As far as ranchers running cattle on marginal lands directly or indirectly subsidized by the federal government, well, I think we have to rethink that concept.
Much more to say, but I don’t insist on having the final work … thanks for reading, and the feedback.