By Jerry Lackey
SAN ANGELO, Texas — The controversy surrounding a recent issuance of a draft concerning the release of the southwestern gray wolf in West Texas has been withdrawn — at least for now, said Sandy Whittley, executive secretary of Texas Sheep & Goat Raisers Association.
“Word from our colleagues in New Mexico and Arizona is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have decided to withdraw the proposed implementation of the Southwestern Gray Wolf Management Plan ‘at this time,’ ” Whittley said. “They say the plan met with too much opposition.”
At the TS&GRA winter meeting in February, a resolution was unanimously passed “to oppose the plan, not only from Texas but including New Mexico and Arizona.”
Joe Will Ross, a Sutton County rancher and San Angelo attorney who heads the TSGRA resolutions committee, said: “The TSGRA does not support wolf recovery within Texas and desires any wolf found within the state be returned to wolf recovery areas or lethally removed if causing damage.”
In the meantime, I received a letter from Joe N. Brown, who now lives in Sonora but spent more than 25 years of his life ranching in Pecos, Terrell and Brewster counties. “I am aware of what predators are capable of doing to a rancher’s bottom line,” he said.
The Preliminary Draft Environmental Assessment for the Implementation of a Southwestern Gray Wolf Management Plan, released Dec. 17 for review and comment by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, called for re-establishing the wolves in New Mexico, Arizona and West Texas.
Whittley presented a map during the TSGRA meeting at the Angelo State University Management, Instruction & Research Center that showed the West Texas line running from Amarillo to Lubbock to San Angelo to Del Rio.
West Texas lands, which are ideal breeding grounds for large predators, encompass the Davis Mountains and the Pecos River watershed in Jeff Davis, Brewster, Pecos, Terrell and Val Verde counties.
The Big Bend region in Brewster County includes Big Bend Ranch State Park, Black Gap Wildlife Management Area and Big Bend National Park, which is contiguous to Parque Natural Sierra Maderas del Carmen (northern Coahuila, Mexico, south of Big Bend National Park).
Brown sent a picture of him with a wolf he trapped in South Pecos County in January 1971.
“These wolves will not stay west of the Pecos River,” he said. “They will go where the food supply is located, i.e. the Concho Valley and the Edwards Plateau.”
According to the September 1972 issue of Journal of Mammalogy, B.F. Anderson shot a male gray wolf on the Cathedral Mountain Ranch, 17 miles south of Alpine in Brewster County, on Dec. 5, 1970.
“Measurements (in millimeters) were as follows: total length, 1435; length of tail, 400; length of hind foot, 246; and ear from notch, 127. The eviscerated carcass weighed 28.12 kilograms. The wolf appeared to have been in good condition, and tooth wear indicated it to be approximately 2.5 years old. The hunter kept the skin but donated the skull to Sul Ross State University,” stated the article.
Dr. Paul Wyerts, with the animal science department at Sul Ross at the time, viewed both the wolf killed on the Cathedral ranch and the one Brown trapped.
“The skulls of both wolves indicate that they were about the same age, and the circumstances of time and place of capture raises the possibility that they were littermates,” he said.
Although the USFWS folks are now planning to release wolves only in Colorado and parts of New Mexico, word is they may decide to draft a Plan B, Whittley said.
“We cannot let our guard down,” she said.