Activists Urge Feds To Spare 2 Wolves
By Leslie Linthicum – Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer
December 6, 2002
Environmentalists claim the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has
ordered
the
hunting and killing of two uncollared, possibly wild-born Mexican gray
wolves, according to a letter the groups sent Interior Secretary Gale
Norton on Thursday protesting the action.
The 15 groups urged Norton to rescind the order to kill the
wolves,
which
have killed five cows on a grazing allotment in an Arizona forest.
No one from the Fish and Wildlife Service was available
Thursday for
comment.
The letter pointed out that the federal government has taken
on the task
of
saving endangered Mexican wolves and has not deliberately killed one
since
the
Hoover administration.
The lobo, saved from extinction by captive breeding programs,
is on the
federal government’s list of endangered species and is the subject of an
extensive reintroduction plan in the forests of southwestern New Mexico
and southeastern Arizona.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service places wolves fitted with
radio
collars
in the forest and tracks their movements.
Many of the wolves have died – the victims of traffic, hunters
or
mountain lions. But program managers have never before approved killing
one of the wolves. The two adult wolves the groups are asking
Norton to spare do not have radio collars and are presumed either to have
been born in the wild or to have been released when they were pups and too
small to wear collars, said Michael C. Robinson. He is with the Center for
Biological Diversity in Silver City, one of the groups petitioning Norton.
In the letter faxed to Norton on Thursday, representatives from 15
environmental, religious and animal protection groups acknowledged that
the department may, under the reintroduction plan, kill a wolf that has
killed livestock. But they asked Norton to weigh the importance of wild
wolves to the western environment against the damage they have done.
Robinson said in an interview the wolves were identified by a
rancher
who
keeps cattle on a rugged allotment in the Upper Eagle Creek area of the
Apache National Forest, a few dozen miles from the New Mexico border.
The rancher has lost five cows in recent weeks. The last
killing came
last
weekend, Robinson said.
The rancher has been reimbursed for the value of the five cows
by Santa
Fe-based Defenders of Wildlife.
“Since the depredations did not represent an economic burden
to the
owners
of the cattle killed, and since livestock husbandry practices in the
region
may
well have contributed to the current depredation,” the letter says, “the
government should be erring on the side of the wolves.”
The groups also pointed out that the federal government has
worked to
save
lobos and has not been involved in killing them since the Great
Depression.
The groups had not received a response from Norton, Robinson
said.