http://www.arizonarepublic.com/opinions/articles/0120robinson20.html

Gray wolves can't read a map - and it's killing them

By Michael J. Robinson - Michael J. Robinson works for the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, N.M., at the edge of the Gila National Forest.

My Turn Jan. 20, 2003

The "poster lobo" for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Mexican gray wolf recovery program, Wolf 511, is about to lose her freedom, as will her mate and the pair's five wild-born pups.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has ordered the trapping of the entire Francisco Pack, not because they preyed on livestock or caused any other problem, but because they have crossed the odorless line demarcating the official Mexican wolf recovery area.

Wolf 511 had been released when the reintroduction program began in 1998, but had the dubious distinction of becoming the first Mexican wolf to be recaptured after leaving the recovery area. Today she is the last of the original 11 wolves still in the wild.

Re-released in 2000, she raised two litters of pups before this year. An experienced mother, she has been repeatedly trapped and handled, along with the rest of her current pack, who have proved smart or lucky or a little of both at three things wolves need to survive: learning to kill wild prey, avoiding livestock and shying from the smell of hidden metal near enticing road-kill elk carcasses.

If they are trapped, their fate may mirror that of other wolves repeatedly taken into captivity and re-released elsewhere. Every other pack subject to this regimen has broken apart, resulting in scattered animals whose fates have invariably been recapture or death.

The level of government lethality against Mexican wolves is increasing even as the rules that scientists say the wolves cannot live with remain unmodified. On Nov. 9, 2001, a male wolf died from exhaustion and stress as a result of an aerial chase to capture him, again, simply for having left the boundaries. The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a press release calling his killing a "successful" operation.

In spring 2002, the agency issued a kill order for this wolf's brother, who was roaming a wide territory that included Gila National Forest, BLM public lands and private lands in southwestern New Mexico. He, too, had not bothered any livestock, apparently subsisting largely on deer, jackrabbits and carrion. But before he could be shot he stepped into a government coyote trap and was taken alive.

Most recently, federal hunters have been sent to shoot two uncollared wolves in Arizona that may have been born in the wild, and who have killed six stock animals.

In total, nine wolves are subject to recapture or death out of a population of 36 known animals (including those not radio-collared but confirmed visually). For the third year in a row, the number of wolves at the end of 2002 was lower than projected in the 1996 environmental impact statement.

The decision to trap out the Francisco Pack results from the government ignoring the recommendations of a team of independent scientists who urged allowing wolves to roam outside of the arbitrary boundaries of the Mexican wolf recovery area, which consists of the Apache and Gila national forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

The June 2001 Paquet Report is named for Canadian carnivore expert Paul C. Paquet. He led a team of three colleagues with expertise in wolves, population dynamics and endangered species recovery, in writing the biological component of the Fish and Wildlife Service's three-year evaluation of the Mexican wolf reintroduction program.

Their 86-page report was conducted under the auspices of the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, an association of scientists. It can be read at:

http://mexicanwolf.fws.gov/Documents/R2ES/Mexican_Wolf_3_Year_Biological_Review.pdf.

The Paquet Report recommended: "Immediately modify the final rule to allow wolves that are not management problems to establish territories outside the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area."

"Retrieving animals because they wander outside the primary recovery area is inappropriate because it is inconsistent with the Service's approach to recover wolves in the southeast, Great Lakes states, and the northern Rockies [and] . . . needlessly excludes habitat that could substantially contribute to recovery of Canis lupus baileyi."

Despite numerous public statements that the Fish and Wildlife Service would act on its three-year review, the agency has disregarded that warning and others.

The Mexican gray wolf is the most imperiled mammal in North America, exterminated from the southwestern United States and from Mexico by the Fish and Wildlife Service and its predecessor agency.

The species was saved only after passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act by the capture of the last five known wild animals from south of the border.

Today, no other endangered wildlife is subject to such absurd and destructive rules as those the Mexican wolves live under. The Francisco Pack can't read lines on a map.

It is time for the Fish and Wildlife Service to change course and, for the first time, give the lobos a break.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

Dear Editor, Sadly The Center For Biological Diversity employee who wrote the distressing letter about the attempts to recapture the Francisco pack of Mexican wolves has his facts so mixed up that his editorial was simply an attempt to sway the citizens of Tucson to his own slanted viewpoints. In other words there are very few facts in it. The Francisco pack collared wolves and uncollared have killed 6 confirmed cattle, they have also killed most of the San Carlos Reservations calves in the past year as well as some 45 missing cattle and calves on the 4 Drag Ranch which borders the reservation. Let's not leave out the Saddle pack who are closing in a close second as ranking livestock killers. US Fish and Wildlife are giving the packs the benefit of the doubt by ordering the shooting of two uncollared wolves that are running with the pack.

This can only happen if the wolves are gaining numbers and according to the USFWS there are between 45 and 60 collared and uncollared loose in AZ and New Mexico. The only reason they plan to kill a certain two wolves is they do not know for sure what those uncollared wolves are, they aren't even sure how many are real Mexican wolves anymore and how many are in fact hybrids that are destroying the gene pool.

Removal of the Francisco pack will do one thing, Stop the livestock depredation temporarily and move it somewhere else. There is no doubt it will slow the destruction of the San Carlos Apache's and 4 drags ranch private property. In other words protect their 5th amendment right to uncompensated seizure of private property. Then the wolves will be re-released into New Mexico, NM gets the killers because we dare to fight this program to protect our poverty stricken rural communities. The Center is correct about one thing, the pack will splinter up and head deeper into livestock country, kill more livestock, be recaptured, driven to death by helicopter, perhaps breed with coyotes or dogs. All of these things have happened, all of them will continue to happen as long as this game is played with American citizens private property as the prize. Where is Defenders of Wildlife in this whole mess? Do they pay for the losses like they promised? Ask the San Carlos and the Ely's on the 4 drag. The Ely's are missing 55 head, 75% of their cash crop. 6 have been confirmed by the USFWS, DOW sent them a check for 3. Let me put it in perspective, burn down someone's house, you took their home with no compensation, embezzle a retirement fund and leave a whole company's worth of your fellow man with no future and nothing they have worked so hard for. That is what is happening with this program. That is what the CBD and the USFWS are promoting each time they tell the public that everything is fine in wolf country. It never was, it never will be. Sincerely Laura Schneberger, wife, mother,teacher,writer, taxpayer, rancher, lives deep in the Gila with wildlife on all sides, on a small cow calf operation.

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