Plan to kill hybrid wolf pups draws fire
By Tom Jackson King, Managing Editor
A volatile issue in the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction plan has been the
declared plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to euthanize, or kill,
any hybrid pups among the seven wolf pups born to the Pipestem Pack. Now,
a solution may be at hand.
Thanks to the threat of a lawsuit and a change of opinion by the wolf
program manager, the pups may survive to live long lives in a Texas
forest.
Rae Evening Earth Ott, executive director of the North American Wolf
Association, told the Eastern Arizona Courier Monday she has offered to
adopt all the Pipestem pups and raise them on her 26-acre wildlife refuge
for wolves, which is located near Spring, Texas. And to keep the federal
agency from euthanizing the pups, she sent her lawyer to talk to the
agency’s new Southwest Region Director H. Dale Hall. Her attorney said
either give them to Ott’s refuge or Ott would fight the agency in court.
“It looks like the pups are going to come here,” Ott said.
“I’m offering a solution. I’ll give them a permanent home for the rest of
their lives. I told him we would take them all and he said that would be
great. He has agreed to do nothing to harm these puppies until we explored
this option. He really and truly does not want to kill them,” Ott said.
“He (Hall) likes the solution. He has to clear it with Arizona Game and
Fish, New Mexico Fish and Wildlife and with Texas Parks and Wildlife,” she
said.
“I felt very good about the conversation I had with Director Hall. I got
the impression he was a man of compassion. I’m very pleased that he will
consider my proposal,” Ott said.
The need for action to save the lives of the hybrid pups developed after
Ott became convinced USFWS Wolf Program Manager Brian Kelly intended to
kill all the Pipestem pups once he received final genetic analysis reports
on whether the pups are hybrids or pure-bred. Kelly had said in a May 5
press release, “The coloring on one pup is not consistent with what we
expect of Mexican gray wolves.”
A photograph of the seven pups later obtained by the Courier showed one
pup with a light brown coat and solid black spots. A spotted wolf pup coat
is not normal.
Agency spokesperson Elizabeth Slown, in a May 22 article in the Courier,
had said, “We would euthanize them. We use the term euthanize the hybrids.
We consider hybrids a problem.”
Ott became convinced that quick action was needed to prevent having the
wolf pups killed “in secret” and then have their fate announced to the
public.
“My goal is saving the lives of those puppies. There’s no reason they
should be murdered. We rescue entire packs and keep them together in
families,” she said of the 38 wolves now resident at her Texas refuge.
Kelly, reached by the Courier, said he sees a value in not killing any
hybrid pups but instead saving them for research.
“We have the legal authority to euthanize those animals (known hybrids)
and we would. With respect to the pups, I’m not so sure,” Kelly said.
“There’s potential value to them. There would be a value to raising known
hybrids.”
Kelly said the second set of blood tests on the seven pups “are not back.
There are four geneticists working on it and one peer-reviewing it. We are
going to be rigorous with our science.”
In short, Kelly said the seven Pipestem pups were still of unknown
parentage as of July 22, but he was open to letting the pups live rather
than euthanize them as Slown earlier stated the agency would do.
Ott said she is pleased with the change of view by Kelly and USFWS. “I
want those puppies saved,” she said.
Ott’s organization NAWA maintains a web site on its work at www.nawa.org.