The Nov. 4 event was sponsored by CU-Sinapu, a sister organization of Sinapu. “We’re about returning the balance of biodiversity to the Southern Rockies,” said CU-Sinapu director and senior environmental studies major Joshua Ruschhaupt.

He said wolves originally lived throughout the entire United States but because of government- and rancher-led extermination programs, there was not a single wolf left in the country by the 1950s. The remaining wolves were moved to Canada and Mexico.

Ruschaupt said this threw off the natural balance.

“The ecosystem evolved with wolves. (Wolf extermination) has taken a major link out of the food chain,” Ruschhaupt said.

“Wolves are a keystone species that create a cascade of effect. Chasing deer aerates meadows, dead carcasses provide food for the microbes in the soil and hunting prevents overgrazing.”

In 1973, Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act. Robinson said this sparked a nationwide interest in returning wolves to America and led to the creation of wolf reintroduction programs.

Robinson said over the past three decades, these programs have effectively situated a few hundred wolves in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Utah.

But the Mexican wolf reintroduction, aimed at Arizona and New Mexico, has been less successful he said.

Mexican wolves originally inhabited an area ranging from Mexico City to the Grand Canyon and east into New Mexico.

Robinson said U.S. Fish and Wildlife extermination programs left approximately six wolves on the planet by 1945, all residing in Mexico.

Through his lecture and slideshow, Robinson explained how advocates for wolf reintroduction managed to capture five of the remaining Mexican wolves and move them to a sanctuary. The single surviving female wolf became the mother of the species. There are now nearly 200 Mexican wolves alive today and no genetic mutations have been seen.

In 1998, after more than 25 years of captive breeding, Mexican wolves were returned to the wilderness of eastern Arizona.

There are currently 24 radio collared Mexican wolves in the wild. Approximately 170 others reside in controlled environments throughout the country, such as zoos or wolf sanctuaries.

But, Robinson said, there have been problems in keeping Mexican wolves in the wild.

He said that in order to appease ranchers, wolf advocates agreed to keep the wolves within a proposed boundary area that spans the border of Arizona and New Mexico. Any wolf found outside the boundary was to be killed or recaptured. This scenario has been repeatedly playing out throughout the past five years, as wolves are brought in and out of the wild.

“We need to rewrite the rules of boundary crossing,” Robinson said. “This is a control program masquerading as a recovery program. If we can reform the program these wolves will thrive. Very few wolves can read road signs or understand the concept of borders.”

But, he said, ranchers aren’t supporting any initiative that will benefit the wolves.

“(Southwestern ranchers) want to convince people it won’t work,” he said. “They are trying to get a rider on an upcoming bill, which will kill the reintroduction program.”

Robinson said he and his colleagues have promised to fight back. “The master plan is to build up political heat on the government,” he said. However, politicians representing the area in question are currently backing ranchers.

“The politicians aren’t heeding the public interest,” he said. “They’re not doing their job.”

“We are saving a critically endangered animal,” Robinson said. “Wolves are part of a functioning ecosystem that evolved over thousands of years.”

Robinson said he will continue to work for a natural, balanced ecosystem. “It’s a question of whether we want to live on a planet that is artificial, Disneyland, or if we want something more than the satisfaction of our immediate desires,” he said.

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