Returning wolves face threats from man and beast
Thursday, September 19, 2002 Posted: 1418 GMT
BEAVERHEAD, New Mexico (AP) — Mike Miller watched from a rocky bluff as
the female went down. The dart pierced her hip, its sedative seeping into
her bloodstream. A half-hour later, after a pursuit along the canyon wall,
he saw the gunner clip the male in the neck.
The cowboy felt a rush of elation.
He had ridden out to Railroad Canyon in the thick of the Gila National
Forest to watch as the government trappers swept down in their helicopter
and scooped up the Pipestem wolves, named for a mountain near the spot
where they were first set free.
He had come to celebrate one small victory in his and his neighbors’ war
against “el lobo” — sworn enemy of the cattle rancher for as long as
there have been ranches in the West.
He had, unabashedly, come to gloat.
When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first proposed reintroducing the
Mexican gray wolf to the wilderness that connects Arizona and New Mexico,
ranchers warned: Wolves and people cannot coexist, and wolves and cattle
are a lethal combination.
This pair alone, Miller believes, killed 19 calves on the outfit he
manages, although federal officials confirmed only two deaths. Some calves
were too far gone to say for certain whether a wolf was the culprit.
They had come within a stone’s throw of his home and his kids, terrifying
his wife.
“I can handle the bears and the mountain lions and the bobcats,” Debbie
Miller says. “When you see them, they take off. They’re scared of you.
These wolves, they’re not scared. And that’s what scares me.”
So on a quiet spring morning, after months of pursuing the marauding
predators, trappers with the federal wildlife agency arrived to return
them to captivity.
“I was glad it was done with,” Mike Miller recalls, although his relief
was short-lived.
This summer, a month after the Pipestem pair were removed, nine more
wolves were released in the wilderness straddling the Arizona-New Mexico
border. At least 21 wolves now roam the pine-studded woods, and an unknown
number have been born in the wild. Others could be freed down the road.
Sooner or later, this cowboy knows, “el lobo” will be back.
Last, best chance to live
It is considered their best chance at survival and, sometimes, their last.
When habitat restoration alone won’t sustain them, when there are so few
creatures left that the odds of natural recovery are slim, establishing a
new population of animals in the wild becomes the lifesaving solution for
many of the nation’s most imperiled species.
“It’s emergency room treatment,” says Ed Bangs, who oversees restoration
of the gray wolf to the northern Rocky Mountains. “You’ve got a patient
that’s dying and you want to save their life. You do everything you can.
And then you wheel in the next patient.”
Wildlife reintroduction has become an integral part of the United States’
efforts to protect and restore endangered species. Without it, the
California condor would likely have vanished from Western skies, the
black-footed ferret disappeared from its prairies.
There would be no red wolves roaming refuges along the coast of North
Carolina, nor gray wolves for tourists to view in Yellowstone National
Park. Due to Bangs’ program, that species is recovered in Idaho, Wyoming
and Montana and could be removed from federal protection in those states
next year.
But success stories often are overshadowed by setbacks. Whether by gun
barrel or bulldozer, man rid the land of these creatures decades ago, and
man remains one of the biggest roadblocks to restoration.
In California, commercial fishermen went to court after sea otters were
found in a prohibited zone where the animals compete with man for
profitable shellfish. In Delaware, developers challenged building
restrictions stemming from a new population of Delmarva fox squirrels.
Lawsuits also come from the other side — environmentalists who insist the
government isn’t doing enough to promote or sustain re-established
species.
Then last year, the government shelved its own plan to reintroduce
grizzlies in Montana and Idaho. Interior Secretary Gale Norton suspended
the program following complaints from politicians and ranchers that the
bears would put livestock and people at risk.
“It’s not so much a biological issue. This whole thing is a social issue,”
says Carter Niemeyer, federal wolf recovery coordinator in Idaho. “We
spend most of our time dealing with a concerned public, sometimes an angry
public.”
Bullets and lead
The animals don’t always cooperate either.
Managers are considering scrapping a program to establish a second
population of sea otters off the coast of Southern California after some
died during relocation and others strayed from the territory. Of 140
otters moved in three years, 30 remain. The overall population of
California otters is now in decline.
Programs involving captive animals face additional challenges. More than
two dozen condors raised in zoos had to be removed from the wild because
of adaptation problems such as roosting on the ground and interacting with
people at swimming pools.
Forty-five of the 144 condors released in Arizona and California since
1992 died, some from lead poisoning after feeding on bullet-riddled
carcasses and others from colliding with power lines. Managers don’t
expect to meet their goal of 300 wild condors for at least another decade.
There are 75 now.
“It takes a lot to bring it about,” condor recovery leader Bruce Palmer
says of reintroduction.
At the heart of the debate over these programs are two divergent ideas of
how this puzzle that is the United States fits together. Can we put the
pieces back the way they once were, or have new parts created a landscape
that can no longer be altered?
“While we may all have this view of what the ‘wild’ ought to be, we don’t
have it anymore,” says Caren Cowan of the New Mexico Cattle Growers
Association, which sued unsuccessfully to stop the Mexican wolf program.
“There are a lot of people around a lot of roads that weren’t there 50
years ago.
“You can’t turn back the clock.”