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John Horning reflects on the Mexican wolf recovery effort's victories and challenges On an unseasonably warm November night this past year, I had the good fortune to be awakened by a pack of howling lobos and the sight of a near-full moon setting over the Mogollon Mountains in the heart of New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness. Less than a month later that exhilaration was eclipsed by the announcement that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had killed yet another wolf for getting crosswise with the livestock industry by preying on a rancher’s cattle. The government’s shooting of the wolf that day was not an isolated occurrence. In the last 16 months alone, federal agents have shot or trapped and removed 26 wolves in response to the livestock industry, leaving less than 50 of these majestic creatures in the wild. The policy of killing wolves as a means of increasing social tolerance has emboldened the opponents of wolf recovery. Smelling blood, the livestock industry and Catron County officials in southwest New Mexico now want to eliminate the entire Mexican wolf recovery program. As a result of this intolerance the entire wolf recovery program is endangered. Recognizing that the current dysfunctional policy of killing wolves while simultaneously trying to reintroduce them to their natural habitat was neither creating social tolerance nor advancing wolf recovery, on July 6 Gov. Bill Richardson called for a moratorium on further wolf killings. The governor’s engagement in Mexican gray wolf issues provides an opportunity to advance new policies that would resolve wolf-livestock conflicts in a more socially acceptable, environmentally friendly and economically just manner. WildEarth Guardians believe that voluntary grazing permit buy-out is the best way to meet these goals. We believe that, by financially compensating ranchers who agree to voluntarily relinquish their public land grazing permits, we can meet the needs of all parties involved in wolf recovery and wildlife protection: ranchers, federal and state land and wildlife agencies, conservation organizations and the public majority who support wild wolves. Though a grazing permit retirement program seems like a common sense approach, implementing it New Mexico and Arizona won’t be easy. Many individual ranchers like the idea of having the option of permit retirement, but the industry - seeing a loss of numbers and political clout - doesn’t. If this program is to succeed, we’ll need the continued leadership of Gov. Richardson and our congressional delegation to provide both political will and financial capital. We envision funding for this permit retirement program coming from a partnership of private, state and federal interests. It’s true that other major flaws with the current framework of the Mexican wolf recovery program must also be remedied. These flaws include the artificial recovery zone boundary outside of which wolves might not roam, the prohibition on direct wolf releases to New Mexico, and the requirement to remove wolves after three livestock predation incidents. Clearly, the Mexican gray wolf recovery program is in desperate need of creative new energy to successfully recover the lobo. As we think about how best to make the Mexican gray wolf recovery effort a success story, let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past decade by offering false solutions that make neither ranchers nor conservationists happy, and which lead to more senseless killing of wolves. One hundred years ago, after killing a lobo and her pups in the Gila, Aldo Leopold, the great ecological thinker and the founder of the modern wilderness movement, began to understand that the mountain needed the wolf. Thankfully, Governor Richardson also understands that mountains need wolves. Please join WildEarth Guardians in convincing other elected officials of this wisdom. John Horning is the executive director of WildEarth Guardians in Santa Fe. |
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