Catron County targets new wolf

This is an attempt to remove yet another of the very endangered Mexican wolves who are now down to just 4 breeding pairs in the wild. Removal of this wolf would make it just 3 breeding pairs. Worse still, this female wolf is pregnant.

Because the Mexican wolves were derived from just 8 wolves, (they were that close to extinction) lack of genetic diversity is a serious issue. It is not just the small population size.

Catron County, NM has passed a county ordinance that they say trumps the federal government. They say they can kill a wolf if they please. This is flat out unconstitutional. This particular county has a habit of arguing the county is supreme to the nation-state. Catron County has long been the home of the county supremacy movement and assorted militia types. They need to be taught a lesson in jail, but it won’t happen under the weak-kneed Bush Administration.

Brief news story. County wants female wolf removed from the wild. Free New Mexican.com.

Added May 2. Here is more on the county supremacy movement. County Supremacy – Just Another Wise Use Ruse. by Ted Williams. The article emphasizes the rule of Catron County.

Added May 8. USFWS will leave the wolf in the wild. KVOA News.

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28 thoughts on “Catron County targets new wolf

  1. They dont say that their ordinance trumps federal law, all it says is that they wrote a letter to the Feds asking them to move a wolf that is a wolf that has attack cattle many times, they just want the issue resolved i imagine, i am sure that they know the consequence for doin somethin like that they just want to get their attention probably to make them move faster.

  2. First of all, I love wolves in a deep and mostly nonverbal way, so this isn’t coming from a man who would hurt them under almost any conceivable circumstances. At the same time (and this doesn’t apply in the US most of the time) I am sick of purported “environmentalists” trying to save dangerous animals from extermination from humans. I have seen film from countries in Africa whose villages live in perpetual fear because lions actually brutally kill and eat their neighbors, mothers and children… and they aren’t allowed to hunt them bc John and Jane Smith in affluent suburbia can’t bear the thought of having to watch reruns of National Geographic. Hello! Earth is about coldblooded competition, and when it involves killing “us” humans… please side with humanity.

  3. What are you talking about down to 3 breeding pairs? I love wolves here in the SW but what I see is this Durango Pack was not a good idea.

    I can tell you that Aspen F1040 has a mate (uncollared) as I have seen her with him. She will not qualify until next year.

    There is also the Bluestem pack, aspen now with saddle pack male, luna, hawks nest pack, san mateo, saddle pack not remove due to puppies, middle fork pack, rim pack not to mention all the uncollered they have reciently picked up and collared in Az that look to be denning.

    But these wolfcrossing folks are saying that Durango pack off on thier killing spree only out of the pen for a week.
    http://wolfcrossing.org/blog/2007/05/01/dangerous-mexican-gray-wolves-durango-pack-has-left-the-wilderness-and-moved-to-catron-county/

    They are also saying this aspen male her mate was at the school in Blue Az. This female is reported to have bit a person so this was not a smart of a good idea to release her. Make the whole wolf program look bad.

    There has been a huge population increase here. So unless a bunch of people start hitting them with their cars again we will have our 100 wolves very soon so not to worry. But I think this durango pack should have not been put out.

  4. Stop smoking “Stoney”… These wolves are not eating people. The issue is livestock, animals people farm on public lands (“the land of many uses”) in the SW. Wolves don’t need to be loved by us, go love your dog. People should recognize our moral responsibility to this keystone species and more importantly respect their value in nature.

  5. Last time I checked the Mexican Wolf has not gotten around
    to eating women and children yet.

  6. I know of precisely no instances where Mexican gray wolves have attacked humans. I would think that I’d have heard something about it, if it happened, since I worked down in the recovery area (out of Alpine, AZ) a few years back.

    At some point, if the wolf recovery is going to succeed, they’re going to have to stop removing so many wolves. The management scheme down there has been disgraceful.

  7. There are dozens more mexican wolves on the ground in the reintroduction area and beyond that this agency will even investigate or will admit exist. worse, the agency chose to re-release the durrango female again pregnant even though she only has one strike left before a lethal take order can occur, who is the bad guy here?

    She is or was pregnant will have puppies will be really hungry and so will her pups, they will have no choice but to take care of business. They have already moved 29 miles back to where she killed her last cow they are now out of the remote (ha) wilderness on private land and might have already killed.

    Something is wrong mentally with a recovery team who keeps doing things that will lead these wolves right straight back to cattle. Their release methods are cruel and predictable. This wolf and her town habituated mate are in the middle of three homes and ranch headqurters on deeded land now and have probably killed a cow and calf already. When is the stupid arrogant management practices of the FWS going to stop? I may not agree with most of the posts on this site but blatant cruelty to the wolf to further the harm to the people in the area is way beyond the intent of the ESA and the intentions of most well meaning wolf supporters.

  8. Jane,

    It is easy to keep track of small populations of animals like wolves. Most are radio collared, and while their count might be wrong on the order of 4 or 5 animals, this is a very small population of wolves.

    If a cow gets killed, so what? It will be compensated. Cows are common, Mexican wolves are not.

  9. Wow, I can’t believe some of the things I read here.

    Wolves are NO threat to ANYONE in SW Arizona. There is a very very small population. Even if the population ate nothing but livestock, the impact would be immeasurable (except to an individual producer of course.)

    This area is a rather odd hotbed of anti-government and anti-wolf sentiment. Of course, this sentiment is borne of economic hardship. Wolves are once again the scapegoat (I think we should change that to scapewolf) in this situation. Development, fuel costs, reliance on subsidies, and a lack of economic diversity are the real problems in the area.

    The only real “issue” with wolves in the area is that ranchers have forgotten why they only pay about $14/AMU for grazing on OUR public lands: that cost represents a subsidized amount to compensate for the fact that there are risks involved in grazing on open land. These risks include poisonous plants, climate, terrain, and wildlife. Wolves, my dear readers, are wildlife; a natural part of the landscape. That wolves were removed previously was a mistake. That they are present now is a reversal of an erroneous policy. Ranchers are complaining about their own legacy, the whole they dug themselves into. But really, the truth is, the whole was dug for them by the large “cow barons” of the old west, large ranches who fought statehood to keep open range.

    But, its all a moot point:
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070502/ap_on_sc/endangered_species;_ylt=Aj.leYFBfAT.Dkmu9omLeqMPLBIF

  10. Jane:

    What is our expertise? What are your references?

    We scientists are bound by our discipline to present fact and back up our arguments. You make very bold claims about the nature of wolves, about the numbers, about their behavior. Some of your claims are not supportable by the literature “release methods”, “town habituated”)

    This, above all else, is the biggest problem with wolf recovery issues: ignorant people making claims and perpetuation information that is little more than rumor.

    If livestock producers were so concerned about their livestock, they’d remove the REAL dangers from the landscape to their livelihood: developers, small farmers, dogs, cars, and people.

  11. San Mateo is no longer a breeding pair, as the alpha male of that pack was shot by the project on February 20, 2007. The Saddle pair are under a removal order. It is only a matter of time before they, too, are history. If the Aspen pack is also removed (as some folks suggest they should be), then the number of breeding pairs left in New Mexico will be down to one. The total number of breeding pairs left in the wild will be four (or three, if you stick closely to the definition of breeding pair in the Final Rule).

    Neither Hawk’s Nest nor Middle Fork produced known pups last year, and the Hawk’s Nest alpha female (AF486) will be eleven years old next week. The Bluestem alpha female (AF521) will be ten tomorrow, making reproduction questionable for her. In Arizona only Rim, Paradise, and Bluestem produced two surviving pups in 2006, and the new Bluestem alpha male is not the biological father of those pups.

    My husband and I just spent three days scouring portions of an area for wolf sign where a suspected uncollared group or pack has been reported, with negative results. We spend considerable amounts of time camping out in the recovery area, and have seen or heard only a few lobos, most of them attributable to collared packs. We remain extremely skeptical of reports of dozens of undocumented Mexican wolves in New Mexico and Arizona.

    Those who attended the recent North American Wolf Conference in Flagstaff, AZ, heard a presentation by Bridgett von Holdt of UCLA on the preservation of genetic diversity in small wolf populations. The number of animals in proven breeding pairs (the effective population) is a more important contributor to the preservation of genetic diversity than is the total number of wolves (the census population). By those standards, the Mexican wolf population continues to skate on the edge of disaster.

  12. Unfortunately it is not uncommon for a county or small town within an endangered species recovery area to draft an ordinance claiming to override federal law. In addition to claiming the authority to kill the endangered species, some have also banned the monitoring of endangered species.
    The latter is an attempt to intimidate field biologists and volunteers who, fortunately, are a determined group, though not immune to stress.

    It is important to read the side bar of the Ted Williams article Ralph has posted a link to. Some of these clowns have threatened people’s lives over this. Some of the less extreme wolf opponents and uninformed public probably view these ordinances as just some grandstanding by local politicians. But since wolves, bald eagles, etc. have been deliberately killed the ordinances are not idle threats. And any threat towards killing people should be taken very seriously.

  13. So Jean, you actually go out on the ground and investigate these things?

    Aren’t you scared for your very life?! 😉

    Actually, it sounds like the Wilderness is safer than the streets of Reserve and nearby towns

  14. Ralph, we have made well over thirty trips (35? 40?) camping in the recovery area in Arizona and New Mexico over the past nine years. In 2003 I led two all-female trips in Arizona, on which the “women” ranged from 64 years down to 11 weeks. Nobody was eaten, and so far, nobody has run afoul of irate anti-wolf folks. We all slept in tents except for the gal with the baby, who slept in a tiny camper. On one of these trips, we actually saw four wolves within about 150 meters of our camp. They ignored us, by the way, and continued on their errand, whatever it was.

    I’ve also helped lead several additional trips in the recovery area, including the first two commercially outfitted wildlife watching trips in the NM part of the recovery area last fall. On some trips we found tracks and scat, heard howls, and even saw a few lobos. But even when we didn’t, folks had a good time and were thrilled to be camping and hiking where wolves might show up at any time. There’s potential for tourism, but negative talk by some (and I stress some) locals tends to discourage, rather than encourage, its development.

    I also served on Governor Richardson’s Catron County Wolf Task Force back in July 2005, which met twice in the county courthouse in Reserve. I was one of five “conservation” members of the roughly 23 member task force. I stayed in a local motel and didn’t feel threatened, but of course, I don’t live there.

    One of the sad things about the current ordinance and previous far-out actions by county officials is that the approximately fifty percent of local residents who are NOT virulently anti-wolf or anti-government are intimidated and fear to speak out. On several occasions at public meetings I have spoken with Catron County residents who were in favor of wolf recovery, but wouldn’t speak in public due to social pressure. I admire them for even showing up.

    Thanks for covering our struggling lobos. I hope some of the folks who read your blog will come down to Mexican wolf country in the Gila and Apache National Forests and discover for themselves the unique ecosystems of the area. Our forests and campgrounds are lightly used. You won’t find crowds, lines, and for the most part, fees, in our forests. Best of all, we have something nobody else in the world has- Mexican gray wolves–if we can just keep them on the trajectory toward recovery! ^..^

  15. How many of the Catron Co. commissioners are directly involved in the livestock industry as we have seen in other states how that influences all decisions made in regard to wildlife management.

  16. are the wolves in game units 16A, 16B, or 17 Jean? Elk units i mean. Just curious cause I am hopefully gonna draw an elk tag there this year. you mentioned the Gilla and I think thats where these units are. Have you seen any elk there?

  17. Elkhunter, I don’t have the map with the game units handy, but will try to find it. There could be wolves in any part of the Gila except, perhaps, the Burro Mountains (though an occasional disperser shows up there now and then).

    And yes, we have seen elk on many, but not all, trips in both the Gila and the Apache NF’s. On our last trip in the Gila in March we saw lots of elk tracks in Snow Creek above Snow Lake–right alongside some beautiful lobo tracks.

    You might take a look at the map of wolf locations posted on the AZGFD web site and compare those locations with your map of the game units. That should answer your question. The URL is
    http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/wolf/interagency.shtml
    I’ve posted the general Interagency Field Team page, because they should be posting a new map in a few days. I don’t believe they archive the old ones at this point, so the specific link might die shortly. Just click on the 3 month wolf distribution map on the right side of the page.

    I’ve heard that NMDG&F surveys indicated that elk numbers are good, but not being a hunter myself, I don’t know all the details. They may have some info on their web site. Good luck. ^..^

  18. To Mike Wolf:

    Statements like yours amaze me:

    “This, above all else, is the biggest problem with wolf recovery issues: ignorant people making claims and perpetuation information that is little more than rumor.

    If livestock producers were so concerned about their livestock, they’d remove the REAL dangers from the landscape to their livelihood: developers, small farmers, dogs, cars, and people.”

    If you ARE a Scientist, then would you please do some reading into the philosophy and sociology of science? Start with Michael Polanyi — maybe “The Tacit Dimension.” Polanyi was a “real” scientist, but recognized that there were many paths to reliable knowledge.

    Just because Jane hasn’t published her observations in the Journal of Wildlife Management doesn’t make them untrue. And just because she may not use the exact lingo you’d like about habituation and release methods doesn’t disqualify her from adding input.

    You might also look up Donald Ludwig’s “The Era of Management is Over.” Another good piece, should be required reading for every undergrad getting a BS.

    Overall, I’d disagree that “ignorant people” expressing themselves is a big threat. I hear a lot of talk at the coffee shop, but I know full well that very little of it would ever translate into bullets going into wolves. Too much work, that!

    No, I’d say the biggest problem is lack of funding for management agencies to do a good job. Wolf specialists here in Montana are spread way too thin, and their funding is going to decline further in the near future. What then? What happens when those seasoned field people with a lot of local knowledge get burned out?

    And what does that mean that “small farmers” are a threat to livestock production? Did you get that from the movie “Shane”? Most cattlemen I know think the big threats are from the other end of the scale: the big agribusiness conglomerates, especially the ones who have achieved pretty good vertical integration of the beef market. About the only part of the chain they have swallowed is the least profitable, riskiest part: cow-calf operations.

  19. SAP: No, there is nothing wrong with making observations: but what IS wrong, is claiming that those observations are fact. “There are dozens more wolves than the agency knows about” is a prime example. Really…so this person knows where all of the wolves are, and how many there are?

    Hopefully you see my point.

    And I will say it again, the biggest problem with wolf recovery is ignorance. The Wolf Recovery Plan stipulated that two of the five biggest causes of wolf decline/extirpation were myths, and lack of education. Yet the plan did nothing to address education formally, except to say it was needed. I addressed this in a talk I gave at Frontiers of Wolf Recovery in 2005. See, if those were the biggest reasons for decline, they should have been formally addressed, but were not. As a result of this failure of the plan, wolves face the exact same threat as they did before.

    And, I never said small farmers were a threat to ranching; I said that ranching was a threat to small farmers, historically. Perhaps you should check out the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” sometime. It’s quite good.

  20. Mike – I do see your point, especially regarding that particular statement. Same kind of bluster goes around about grizzly bears and wolves in the northern US Rockies, too. It is really aggravating that ANYONE would claim that they “know” how many are out there, especially with secretive, wide-ranging animals.

    And, I agree to some extent that bad attitudes based on misinformation can translate almost directly into dead wolves and bears. But, I think it’s kind of boilerplate for wildlife conservationists to say that the solution is “education.”

    I would encourage everyone to dig a little deeper, keep improving and refining their understanding of the challenges we face in restoring large carnivores in a graceful, just, and ethical way.

    I will not bore everybody by restating my previous critique of “education” on this blog; here’s the link instead:

    http://wolves.wordpress.com/2007/
    04/15/fencing-range-riders-guard-animals-show
    -some-promise-in-safeguarding-livestock/

    From your statement, it DID appear you were saying small farmers are a “REAL danger . . . to [livestock producers’] livelihood”.

    I like that movie too. One of John Wayne’s top 3 performances, I’d say. “Shane” really shows the conflict between the open-range stockman and the “nester” homesteader, too. “Tom Horn” (screenplay by Tom McGuane) is another film with similar theme.

  21. If you want this program to succeed US Fish and Wildlife needs to follow their SOPs.

    This Durango Wolf bit someone in November then their released her and her mate howled in someone’s front yard all night after killing a cow and calf. All this in the span of a weeks time. This was confirmed by WS and some other agency officials.

    That is Habitual behavior.

    That irritating wolfcrossing.org site even has been so bold to post a map of where these wolves are and is stating all the info these wolves are doing. This mess makes them look good and us look bad.

    But if you guys want to defend this habitual wolf go ahead…it is not good for us in the wolf program as there are good wolves out there. It would be easier if we could pick her up and get her out of their before she has to be shot.

    Putting out this Durango pack was a really big mistake and it could make things look pretty bad for the program and for those of us that work connected to the wolf program. I hope I am wrong. But I can say that people are worried.

    The Durango female was also so stressed she dumped her pups, as the reports I am hearing from the inside are that the pups are gone. No details yet but I will post them when I know more. I hope that info is also wrong…but since this has happened before it could be true.

    Jean I really appreciate all your great work and comments I do believe your ages are correct on those females putting them towards the top end of breeding years. Maybe we will get lucky.

    There is also the new Bacho pack which is a single M990 who has met up with a lovely lady. I am excited that Az has a new pack. I am told they are denning.

    There are many uncollareds running around as a few wolves in those packs have recently been picked up and collared. I know of at least one that was in a group of 4 or 5 uncollareds in Az. These will start showing up on the newly public flight reports soon.

    As for game units I hear that 16B in New Mexico has very few remaining elk. So I hope you do not draw 16B. I have not visited there in the last year as my work has kept me in Az. The wolves are in all game units and I have seen fewer calves this year and have heard an outfitter in New Mexico say that they have seen no new calves in certain locations. I have not been able to verify that.

  22. BTW I am not that other Jane but the first Jane that posted and my following post above.

  23. Jane 2 here this is my second post.
    I can see there is no reasoning with you all. Jean Ossario is your wolf expert for this area and she is someone who does not live here in the middle of them.
    She couldn’t find an uncollared wolf if it bit her on the ass.
    There were ten to twelve people attending the Governors task force Jean, get some new glasses.

  24. Just checked and there are nineneen names on the task force roster (including the Governor’s representative, Ned Farquhar and Game and Fish Director Bruce Thompson). One of those nineteen was unable to attend. I guess both “Jane” and I remembered incorrectly. It’s been nearly two years.

    As for uncollared wolves, eleven out of twenty individual lobos I’ve seen have not had collars. Whether they are collared or not is irrelevant to us, as we have never had the use of a radio receiver. 🙂

  25. Thanks Jean. You are a class act for your cordial reply. You add a ton to this issue down there and we appreciate your input and efforts for the wolves.

  26. First: hey Maggie, I guess I invited a sarcastic reply by making a sarcastic comment about armchair environmentalists. Of course I know wolves rarely attack humans. The issue I was trying to address was a deeper one which I found myself confronted with– why do I (and many of us here) care so much for wolves? This deep respect goes beyond crisis situations like cases of dwindling population.

    Rationally I know that Earth’s natural “law’ is predicated largely on species competing and consuming eachother. Beyond the utilitarian argument that species loss will result in damage to local ecosystems over the short term, what moral imperative to protect wolves are we actually invoking here?

    Are we secretly longing for the freedom in our own lives that we see or idealize in the wolf? What do we lose about ourselves when a species becomes extinct?

    Anyway, I’d still rather side with wolves than self-righteous, public-subsidized ranchers. My apologies for getting some people all hot and bothered 😉

  27. Hey Mike wolf,

    The biological sciences and the biology of our landscapes are suffering greatly from corrupted science (see some of the recent posts on sosforests if you question this).

    The very history of the so called Mexican “wolf” program has been rife with corruption. Proper science would have not used the founding lineages that were almost certainly hybrids. I have the documents that show this history and process.

    The real history of property rights in the west does not support your contention that these ranching familes are on the public dole, only the fact of bureaucratic obsfucation of reality does. Almost 20 years ago Rancher Wayne Hage wrote probable the most extensive and well researched and documented histories of the settlement and aquisition of property rights and interests in the western states (“Storm over Rangeland”).

    Since real history did not coincide with the spin the feds wanted to put on the issue, for his trouble of setting the record straight the BLM (the feds had retained, as in the Gila and Apache-Sitgreaves forests, surface estate in the form of mineral rights) came down hard on him forcing him off of his titled and purchased allotments. He fought the feds for many years and came out victorious. The cattle (he has recently passed on) of his estate now graze permit free and all that’s left is the monetary settlement for the years the government kept him from using his OWN property. That should cost the feds tens of millions of dollars as Las Vegas has offered something like $200,000 million for the rights to his water alone!

    The ranchers own the water rights, without which forage is useless, and the forage on the cattle trails that literally blanket the allotments. All the streams, ponds, and trails have accompanying easements which the rancher also OWNS. This public lands hoofala is merely urban myth promulgated to allow land agencies to flagrantly “empower” themselves.

    This has become typical bureaucratic behavior and the effort by USFWS to threaten Catron County for fullfilling their duty of office by stating their desire to protect their people is not a reason for such badge waving. The wolf programs own founding documents expressly state in an MOU with the counties that they retain the right to effect the protection of their citizens as prescribed by their oath of office and the respective states constitutions and the Constitution for the People of the United States.

    A later project director broke all the rules of scientific propriety for honestly determining a true and pure subspecies from a specific area, destroying forever the possibility of introducing a succesful certifiably non-hybrid lineage, is now involved in Dave Foreman’s “Rewilding Institute” deduction might permit one to imagine that wolves and other large predators are not actually important to these people as species, but as land torpedoes strategically placed so as to achieve the institute’s not so veiled goal of achieving a landscape completely devoid of all human existance except for a few animalistic examples living off the land with no tools.

    One can also imagine that the next target, after the rural cultural genocide, will be the suburban and then the urban, in order of political power. One just cannot imagine what it is like to be in the middle of a “wolf”-terror spree until one experiences it first hand. Down of the Blue River the Aspen Pack whent from house to house, completely unafraid, running mules, horses and cows into fences killing cats, (one neighbor lost three) dogs, developing wide runnels by pastures killing cows killing calves howling outside bedroom windows, defacating around the school, showing up at the door as school was let out. Ramming dogs into backdoors and then trying to run into the house with a toddler in the room. Just imagine if you can this continuing on a very regular basis for over 6 months. I don’t know how some survived the worry and the sleep deprevation (they looked pretty sorry) as the wolves were there enough that every sound at night would wake you up to wide eyes and adrenaline wondering where are the dogs, are the wolves on the mules? Horses? Cattle? No house with any livestock or pets could be left alone–ever. Now mothers must watch children all the time when outside, not even around the corner out of sight for a minute and must monetor their children on the way to and at they bus stop coming and going. Last week arrangements for this got mixed up and two children were stalked as they walked unattended the 1/4 mile home.

    Jean Ossario sounds sincere but I question her grasp of the reality people at ground zero during a “wolf” blitzkrieg have forced upon them. There are some diaries on wolfcrossing.org/blog website that might convey something of the reality. I was also on the New Mexico Governor’s Task Force on the wolf. I remember one night when we were explaining the reality of what was then going on on the Blue River to her and she just seemed to loose it and didn’t want to hear anymore. I hadn’t really meant to upset her and didn’t realize she would react that way. People have to understand to have empathy.

  28. Hey Jean, good to hear from you. I agree with you. As I spend much of my summer up in the Alpine are and have , like you seen the Mexican Grey wolves. Mostly by chance and very quicly. I too have seen many un-collards. But I’d like to stress the fact that I look for them they don’t find me. I’ve spent countless week-ends looking and sometimes nothing is all I see.I Don’t argue with people that haven’t been exposed to the wolf behavior. If they want to know the rea facts then they need to get out their and look for the wolves theirselves and then they can make all the comments, be they negative or positive. As for the ADGF, as I have before, I defend their actions. I might not agree with everything they do. but these peolpe are hard devoted workers on this program. Unless you’re in there shoes then I don’t think we should degrade their actions. I’ve met them and have been with them on several occassion. If anyone out there wants to feed me negative comments fill free to. I’ll just ignore them. But like I said, until you get out in the field youself, don’t belittle something you don’t have up front imfo about. Happy wolfing, cause I do!

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