Hybrids may be the culprits in deer attack
By Dianne Stallings
Nathan Thomas was walking with his wife on Box Canyon Circle in Ranches of Sonterra subdivision north of Ruidoso when they witnessed two wolves attack and drag a mature doe into the Bonito River.
In an email to another resident of the community, Thomas, president of the Ranches home owners association, wrote that the incident occurred not at night, but at 9:45 a.m. Saturday. He estimated the mule deer weighed about 150 pounds.
“We were able to save the deer by getting the wolves to release her throat and flee after a 20-second vicious attack,” Thomas wrote. “Thank goodness I didn’t shoot the wolves, because later when I got on the Internet, I discovered these animals were Mexican gray wolves, an endangered species protected by both federal and New Mexico law.”
He described the canines as looking similar to a 50-pound German shepherd with burnt orange/red fur mixed into their lower torsos and tails.
“I’m writing, because if these animals are roaming ROS in the daytime, they could have just as easily grabbed one of our small dogs or a neighbor’s much larger dog,” Thomas wrote. “I don’t know if they’d attack a human. Perhaps you might want to alert ROS residents of this incident. I’m not naive enough to think there aren’t predators in this part of New Mexico, but seeing two wolves appear out of nowhere and grab a huge deer right off the pavement in broad daylight was a sobering reminder to be ever vigilant when walking, jogging or bicycle riding.”
Jeff Humphrey, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that handles the Mexican Gray Wolf Reintroduction project in Arizona and New Mexico, said Thursday that no wolves have been released anywhere near the area around Ruidoso. Reintroduction of wolves is restricted to the Apache National Forest in Arizona, with some translocation of wolf packs to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico.
He also confirmed that there is no indication the packs being tracked have left their designated areas, although he acknowledged that not all wolves in the project wear monitoring collars.
“There’s no indication any are missing, but with wolves in the field, we have learned never to say never,” Humphrey said.
Anyone who thinks they are seeing wolves should snap a picture and then call the hot line at 888-459-WOLF, he said. Having photographs would be helpful in determining the origin of the canines, he said.
Wildlife biologist Larry Cordova, with the Smokey Bear Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest around Ruidoso, said the “wolves” sighted more likely are wolf hybrids than Mexican gray wolves from the reintroduction project begun in 1998.
Several Lincoln County residents breed hybrids and some do not always keep them confined to their property, allowing them to revert to their basic hunting instincts, he said.
“That’s probably what it is,” Cordova said. “Wolves do travel great distances, so over time, if they are allowed, they will disperse into new areas. However, this seems a little far from their release areas. I also know that once a pack or individuals cross the line of where they are supposed to be, the are recaptured and taken back to a (holding) station.
“At one time, wolves were able to keep the balance of species of large mammals in check. Once we took them out, that’s when we had problems with population explosions. We really do need some of these larger predators that can keep the balance in our ecosystem. When we took out these larger predators, even the grizzly bear, back in time, that’s when the deer didn’t have to worry about anything but mountain lions and coyotes. Wolves would take out (lions) too. They were basically on the top of the pyramid. It really messed a lot of things up.”
He recalled that before the reintroduction of the MacKenzie Valley wolf in Yellowstone National Park in 1995, wildlife habitat was being lost.
“The elk and deer had nothing to worry about, so they fed and foraged and basically took out a lot of the aspen and shrub species,” Cordova said. “Over time, they depleted the whole ecosystem. The overall diversity of the landscape changed. Once they brought back the wolf, all of a sudden, the elk no longer stayed in one place. They had to move and not spend a lot of time in one place.”
The habitat began to recover and vegetation returned, including aspen groves and willows along the creeks, he said,
“Because of all the vegetation coming back, the beavers also came back,” he said. “They started creating better habitat. It was amazing, (the biologists) found by taking out the wolf, it affected the overall ecosystem. That study still is online with a video on You-Tube that talks about it
“Who knows how much it impacted us by taking that predator out of our ecosystem. We don’t know.”
Wolves were wiped out locally by about 1910, Cordova said.
“They had massive hunts, because once you start bringing cattle into the country, ranchers were very concerned about the impact on their livelihood and they started shooting them,” he said. “Even the Forest Service used to (shot wolves) in the 1930s, before we realized how they can improve the habitat. They wanted to take care of all the different aspects of the forest and thought without wolves, there would be more deer and elk.”
The Mexican wolf is the rarest, southern-most occurring and most genetically distinct subspecies of all North American gray wolves, according to background on the reintroduction project. The entire gray wolf species in North American south of Canada was listed as endangered in 1978, except in Minnesota, where it was classified as threatened. Packs bred from Mexican wolves captured in 1980 were reintroduced in Arizona and New Mexico in 1998, as a nonessential, experimental population.