Meanwhile, officials in another agency, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, fretted over the difficult decision to impound the
wolf, one of an official count of 58 in New Mexico and Arizona.
The tug of war over what to do with the Fox Mountain wolf
has illustrated again the deep divide that has plagued the recovery of
the endangered Mexican gray wolf.
On one hand, conservationists want a native predator that
was nearly hunted to extinction restored to the landscape under the
Endangered Species Act; on the other, critics, dominated by the
livestock industry, argue the lobos are a menace that take a bite out of
their pocketbooks by killing cows and other livestock.
Now, the Fish and Wildlife Service appears poised to endorse
a new approach, dubbed coexistence, aimed at creating more tolerance
for lobos in the ranching community.
Details won’t be released until next month at the earliest.
However, according to a broad outline provided by people familiar with
the plan, it would do this: Rather than compensate ranchers for
confirmed wolf kills of livestock, the program would pay ranchers and
those who own property in wolf country, based on a formula that would
take into account a number of factors, such as the proximity of a wolf
pack, the number of livestock exposed to the threat of wolves, a
ranchers’ willingness to take steps to reduce wolf-livestock conflicts
and the growth of the wild wolf population.
The idea of shifting to a new way of compensating ranchers
in wolf country is, in part, a recognition that ranchers sustain losses
for which they are not compensated, for instance, cattle that disappear
or stressed cattle, said Craig Miller, Southwestern representative of
Defenders of Wildlife and a member of the Mexican Wolf Interdiction Fund
Stakeholders Council. The Council makes recommendations on how much to
pay ranchers for livestock killed by wolves, with payments from a
privately managed fund financed by Defenders and the federal government.
A baseline payment, of a still undetermined amount, would
recognize that “there are costs of living in the presence of wolves,”
Miller said. “The program is trying to get away from postmortem
compensation. That begins with dead livestock and ends with dead
wolves.”
As Miller envisions it, Arizona-based Defenders of Wildlife
would continue, as it does now, to provide funds to ranchers for
measures aimed at avoiding wolf-livestock conflicts, such as hiring
range riders to guard herds, moving cattle to pastures away from wolf
dens, or the purchase of hay. According to Miller, ranchers could be
paid to take steps to reduce conflicts with wolves, and then be rewarded
when those measures result in the growth of the wolf population.
“It’s trying to get cooperation on both sides,” said Sherry
Barrett, wolf recovery program coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife
Service. “There’s a lot of emotion around wolves, both pro and con. … So
we are trying to find something that reduces some of this conflict.”
A key part of the plan — securing a big enough pot of money
to pay ranchers an amount that would allay concerns about cattle losses —
has yet to be accomplished. Money in the existing Interdiction Fund
managed by a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group can only be used to
pay ranchers for livestock losses.
To succeed, the plan would have to be embraced by the
livestock industry, and several ranchers in Arizona and New Mexico said
this week that they knew little or nothing about it. Laura Schneberger,
president of the Gila Livestock Growers Association, said she doubted
such a program would work for small ranchers who are less able to endure
wolf depredations.
In the case of the Fox Mountain packs’ cattle depredations,
ranchers called for wolf removals, while hundreds of wolf supporters
pushed back against the initial kill order issued Aug. 8. Many wolf
advocates celebrated when the kill order was rescinded two days later,
after permanent housing for the wolf was secured in an Arizona
sanctuary, while others maintained that the wolf should be allowed to
remain free.
Before a few wolves were reintroduced to the wild in 1998,
federal officials projected there would be about 100 wolves in the
forests of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona by the end
of 2006. As of January, the official population count was 58.
Illegal poaching and the removal of wolves in earlier years
for cattle depredations have been major factors in keeping down the
number of wild-roaming lobos.
The desire to respond to rancher concerns was, in no small
measure, what motivated Fish and Wildlife to exercise the discretion it
has to manage, or remove, a “problem” wolf that repeatedly preys on
livestock, Barrett acknowledged.
Whether a new approach to compensating ranchers for living
with wolves is enough to bridge old divides is far from certain. Just in
the past week, an online petition was launched that calls for blocking
new releases of wolves and, eventually, the removal of wolves from the
Southwest.
“I suspect we’ll get backlash from all sides,” Barrett said.
“I’ve never seen a plan that didn’t get backlash, but what we are doing
is trying to find a middle ground.”
Meanwhile, one freedom-loving lobo continues trying to steer clear of traps.
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column.
Comment directly to Rene Romo in Las Cruces at rromo@abqjournal.com or
575-526-4462. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the
editor.
No comments:
Post a Comment