Howling for Mercy: Wolves on the Western Landscape

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Lesson

in Barry Lopez's "Of Wolves and Men":

A female wolf left four or five pups in a rendezvous area in the Brooks Range one morning and set off down a trail away from them. When she was well out of sight, she turned around and lay flat in the path, watching her back trail. After a few moments, a pup who had left the rendezvous area trotted briskly over a rise in the trail and came face to face with her. She gave a low bark. He stopped short, looked about as though preoccupied with something else, then, with a dissembling air, began to edge back the way he had come. His mother escorted him to the rendezvous site and departed again. This time she didn't bother watching her back trail. Apparently the lesson had taken, for all the pups stayed put until she returned that evening.

(If I could turn into Mama Wolf, maybe Banjo & Skillet would listen better...)

Government Leaves Wolf Pack in the Wild

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will not remove a wolf pack from the wild in southwestern New Mexico. Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle ruled last week that the Middle Fork Pack is highly valuable genetically to the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program. 

Tuggle says the pack's alpha male and female are a breeding pair that are raising at least four pups. He says removing them could jeopardize the pups' survival.

Under the agency’s three strike rule, any wolf that kills three or more cows in a twelve month period can be trapped or killed. 

Conservation advocates say the decision is good news for Mexican gray wolves. Michael Robinson is with the Center for Biological Diversity. He says both the alpha female and male of the Middle Fork Pack have lost limbs to traps.

ROBINSON: "They have in separate incidents stepped into leghold traps set by unknown parties and were seen in the telemetry monitoring flights that the government carries out running with the leghold traps attached to their legs and were captured to save their lives and their legs had to be amputated because of the injuries they’d sustained."

Robinson says cows that died of natural causes attract wolves to areas in the Gila National Forest where there are a large number of grazing cattle. Five previous wolf packs have been removed from the area for killing cattle. 

Robinson says this change in the agency’s enforcement of the removal policy could be the result of a political shift under the democratic administration of President Obama.

ROBINSON: "The Bush era persecution of the Mexican wolf has been terribly damaging and it’s been terribly unpopular among the wolf-loving majority in the southwest and the United States and it may well be that the stranglehold of special interests on decisions that should be scientific and conservationist in nature is weakening."

According to the Silver City Sun-News, some ranching and cattle industry representatives are critical of the ruling. Caren Cowan of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association says it is disappointing that the government is not protecting the livestock industry.*

*What?! Outrageous! How could the mean old government neglect the poor livestock industry? (That's a first!!)

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