Mexican wolf recovery is going slowly
By Brent Israelsen
The Salt Lake Tribune
PINOS ALTOS, N.M. — A slot in Utah’s spectacular San Rafael Reef is called “Spotted Wolf Canyon,” but it has been a century since any wolf has been spotted there.
ýýý That may change this century as wolves reintroduced in the wilds to the north and south of Utah try to colonize the Beehive State.
ýýý If a canis lupis comes in from the south, chances are it will be a Mexican gray wolf, an endangered species struggling to gain a pawhold here in the mountains of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona.
ýýý This is Aldo Leopold country, a vast expanse of roadless areas where native forests of pinyon, juniper, Pondersa and fir remain largely intact and support herds of elk and deer. It is prime habitat for the Mexican wolf, which was exterminated from the United States in the first half of the 20th century.
ýýý In 1998, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the authority of the Endangered Species Act, began reintroducing Mexican gray wolf packs into Arizona’s Apache National Forest, later relocating packs into New Mexico’s Gila National Forest.
ýýý The goal was to establish 100 wolves by 2006.
ýýý But unlike the northern gray wolf of the Yellowstone region, where recovery goals have exceeded expectations, the Mexican gray wolf recovery effort is under- achieving.
ýýý The Fish and Wildlife Service had projected that by this year, however, the Mexican wolf population would total 55, including 11 packs and 10 breeding pairs.
ýýý At last count, there were only a handful of breeding pairs, eight packs and an estimated 40 wolves, most of them in Arizona.
ýýý Joy Nicholopoulos, supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s ecological services division in New Mexico, said the program’s setbacks are due mainly to a high number of wolves killed illegally. Most ranchers in southwestern New Mexico oppose wolf reintroduction.
ýýý She said she is heartened, however, by a steady number of wolves being born in the wild — a good sign for continued survival of the species.
ýýý Michael Robinson, a Pinos Altos resident who advocates for the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity, points to a more objective statistic: Wolves equipped with radio collars have decreased from 28 a year ago to 18 today.
ýýý “There are reasons not to be optimistic,” said Robinson, whose organization was among several environmental groups that filed suit in the late 1980s to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce the Mexican gray wolf.
ýýý Despite the setbacks, wolf advocates have new reasons to be hopeful. Earlier this month, the New Mexico Game Commission, under orders from Gov. Bill Richardson, reversed its anti-wolf stand and asked the federal agency to consider changing its management policies to give the wolves a better chance of long-term survival.
ýýý Nicholopoulos said the commission’s support of the wolf will give the agency more flexibility.
ýýý Historically, the Mexican gray wolf, or “lobo,” ranged throughout much of northern and central Mexico and the American Southwest, from Mexico City to Albuquerque and from San Antonio to Phoenix.
ýýýThe Fish and Wildlife Service last year convened a team to revise a 1982 wolf recovery plan designed to lead to the wolf’s eventual removal from the endangered-species list.
ýýý Some groups are lobbying for that revision to include a reintroduction of wolves to the Kaibab Plateau on the north rim of the Grand Canyon.
ýýý “They are going to have to reintroduce wolves into other areas, and we think the Grand Canyon is the best remaining habitat in the Southwest,” said Lara Schmit, a Flagstaff, Ariz., activist coordinating a coalition of environmental groups trying to bring wolves back to northern Arizona.
ýýý If wolves get established on the Kaibab, they undoubtedly would spread into southern Utah, heightening concerns among Utah ranchers and big-game hunters already wary of wolves moving into the state from packs in Yellowstone National Park.
ýýý The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is devising a plan to manage the northern gray wolf, which soon may be removed from the federal endangered-species list.
ýýý But the management plan would not apply to the Mexican gray wolf, which will remain on the list for several years.
ýýý Although the two wolf species can be distinguished by experts, mainly by size and coloring, the Fish and Wildlife Service has made management simple with an arbitrary line that divides Utah in half.
ýýý The southern half of the state was designated a “distinct population segment” for the Mexican gray wolf.
ýýý The dividing line, coincidentally, is Interstate 70 — which slices through Spotted Wolf Canyon.