Karen Warnick – The Independent
EAGAR — Citizens for Multiple Land Use and Access (CMLUA), a regional organization, held a wolf conference May 17 at the Eagar Town Hall. Several speakers came from out of the area including David Spady, the producer of the film “Wolves in Government Clothing,” which was shown at the conference.
John Bennett of CMLUA told the 40 or so people in attendance that he hoped they would learn enough at the conference to “make you mad enough when you leave to do something” before introducing the first speaker, Debbie Bacigalupi from Northern California.
Bacigalupi comes from a farming and ranching family, and ran for election in the newly drawn 14th Congressional District in California, which she lost in 2012.
She said she wants to preserve private property rights, protect small farmers and curtail overarching regulations. She is coproducing documentaries on the impact of stringent regulations on farmers and ranchers, and the removal of vital dams across the United States.
She talked about the United Nations’ Agenda 21 program and its buzzword: sustainable development. She showed a brief CSPAN clip from Oct. 2, 1992, where the government talked about adopting Agenda 21.
“This program is a profound reorganization of human actions,” said Bacigalupi. She urged everyone to learn more about Agenda 21, as she said it was affecting everything that happens in this country from education to wolves.
She highlighted several books that would help people become more aware; the Global Biodiversity Assessment and the Earth Charter Initiative for Global Governance, and the website america2050.org.
Laura Schneberger, who is from Catron County, N.M., spoke next. She owns a ranch that has been impacted by wolves and is a member of the Cattlemen’s Association.
She said she has been active as an opponent of the wolf reintroduction program in Arizona and New Mexico, and the impacts on rural communities, ranchers, farmers and kids.
“I don’t care about what we look like or how we are treated by the pro-wolf side. We need to do something,” she said. She also talked about wolf interactions on her ranch and neighboring ranches, and that the counties affected need to be at the table for any negotiations or plans for expanding the wolf program.
Schneberger warned people that they need to be cautious about signing anything with the feds, especially Fish and Wildlife, because they “aren’t responsible for following their part of the agreement, but we are.”
She received a loud round of applause for stating that ranchers needed to band together to take out a pack of wolves that has 16 confirmed kills on livestock and “make them take us to court.”
Spady spoke next. He is a public affairs and media consultant and has spoken on many national news programs. He is currently an in-house advisor for a major radio network and a consultant for Americans for Prosperity.
Spady said that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a constitution for animals that has given them more rights than people have.
He said that because of the ESA, the delta smelt has put California farmers and ranchers out of business and he is currently working on another film on that topic.
He said he became interested in the wolf story after attending last year’s Springerville wolf meeting, where several prominent biologists spoke. After interviewing several local ranchers and the biologists, Spady wrote about it, including the stories of cages for kids in New Mexico to protect them from the wolves and said it gained national attention.
Spady is originally from Montana and said that after the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone, the loss of local wildlife and proliferation of wolves has led to legal wolf hunting.
“Twenty dollars is all it costs for a tag that lets you kill up to five wolves,” he said. “There are now too many wolves in Montana and they are hard to kill.”
After Spady spoke, his film was shown. The website for the film states: “…a documentary about predators in the wild, and in government, and how the ESA has empowered both of them to destroy people’s lives … is one man with a camera exploring the consequences of mixing an apex predator with civilization. True conservation cannot come at the expense of mankind. When civilization is forced to regress to accommodate a bygone ecology, the results are simply … unsustainable.”