Wolves, Wild Dogs and Foxes: Page 7 Endangered Species Handbook

Persecution and Hunting

Wolves, Wild Dogs and Foxes: Page 7

Historically, the critically endangered Mexican Gray Wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) roamed montane woodlands and drylands in northwestern Mexico and extreme southern Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. After centuries of persecution, they disappeared altogether from the United States and verged on extinction in Mexico. In 1976, the subspecies was listed on the US Endangered Species Act, and in 1982, the Fish and Wildlife Service approved a recovery plan in which a professional trapper was hired to capture the last few wild wolves in Mexico. Only five of these wolves were found, and in this 11th-hour rescue, they were live-trapped in Chihuahua and Durango for captive breeding (Brown 1995). They have bred well in captivity and, in 1998, numbered 175 distributed in a number of American zoos (Bass 1998). Through genetic testing, new strains of pure Mexican Wolves have been identified in Mexican Wolves already in captivity; this adds to the subspecies’ known diversity (Brown 1995). Smaller than northern wolves, males weigh 60 to 70 pounds and females 50 to 60 pounds.

The recovery plan's major goal was to reintroduce Mexican Gray Wolves into portions of their original range in a joint project by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the ADC program which had been responsible for their demise, the US Army, and the state wildlife departments of Arizona and New Mexico (Brown 1995). Surveys conducted in the region determined that most people favored the reintroductions (Brown 1995). Ted Turner, the founder of Cable News Network (CNN) and other cable stations, is New Mexico's largest landowner with more than 1 million acres. He offered one of his ranches, Ladder Ranch, which is near the Blue Range mountains release site, as a holding area and paid an employee to oversee construction of holding pens (Bass 1998). This was supported by his organization, the Turner Endangered Species Fund (Bass 1998).

Although the public as a whole supported the wolf reintroduction, many New Mexican ranchers expressed great antipathy. The national forest release sites allow hunting and trapping. Many volunteers and a grassroots organization, Preserve Arizona's Wolves (PAWS), have worked for decades to bring about this reintroduction and volunteered their time to help on Ted Turner's ranch preparing for the arrival of wolves from two zoos (Bass 1998). In December 1997, four wolves, two sisters and two brothers from separate zoos, arrived at Turner's ranch and were paired off male-and-female in separate pens, where they stayed for several months (Bass 1998). More arrived and spent time in acclimatization pens before release. The release program failed. Of 11 Mexican wolves released in the area, five died, one disappeared and is presumed dead, and five have been returned to captivity near Alpine, Arizona (Sink 1998). One pup born in the wild is missing and presumed dead, since its mother was shot in August 1998 (Sink 1998). A New Mexican rancher is said to have offered $35,000 to anyone who would kill all the wolves returned to the wild (Sink 1998).

Among the wolves that were shot was one of a newly formed--but strongly bonded--pair, Val and Minnie (Bodo 1999). Soon after release from the holding cage, Val was shot by a camper who claimed that the wolf charged at him; a necropsy revealed that the wolf had been killed standing still, broadside to the man (Bodo 1999). The female, Minnie, who had been born at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque, was pregnant with four pups when her mate was killed. She was returned to her holding pen and began to try frantically to dig and leap her way out of the pen (Bodo 1999). Her pups were born, but all died. At the end of 1998, she was shipped to the Living Desert Wildlife and Botanical Park in Palm Desert, California, where she paced or remained curled up in a spot of dirt, failing to interact with her surroundings or a male put in her pen (Bodo 1999). She was spayed and will remain in captivity for the rest of her life. As for the other deaths, no examples of livestock predation were found. About 140 of these wolves remain in captivity (Nowak 1999).

The reintroduction of Mexican Gray Wolves will be far more difficult than the Yellowstone National Park reintroduction, which involved transplant of wild Canadian wolves. These captive-born wolves have no knowledge of wild survival. They will need to learn how to hunt large prey as a pack, as well as how to survive the many threats humans pose to them. Their intelligence and instincts may be the deciding factors for their survival.

The legal status of the Gray Wolf in the lower 48 states seems destined to change in the near future. The Fish and Wildlife Service wants to change the status of the species from Endangered to Threatened in all but the southwest, where the Mexican subspecies is being reintroduced, and remove the Minnesota wolves altogether from the US Endangered Species Act (Revkin 2000). Minnesota wolves continue to be persecuted, and suffer from parasitic heartworms and deadly canine parovirus disease spread by domestic dogs (Nowak 1999). Delisting undoubtedly will unleash unrestricted hunting and trapping of these animals. Total legal control will revert to the state of Minnesota should this proposal be finalized.

The wolves in the West, from Yellowstone National Park to Idaho, Montana and Washington, would be listed as Threatened when removed from the experimental category. This category has much more flexibility concerning how much protection a species receives. Penalties are lower, and species may be hunted and trapped under the category. Some ranchers in the West are prepared to eliminate wolves outside national parks. One rancher in Montana installed loud alarms that are triggered by the radio collars used to monitor most of the area's wolf packs (Revkin 2000).

The approximately 3,500 wolves south of Alaska, most of which are in Minnesota, occupy only about 5 percent of their original range, and as a result of prejudice and unfounded fear, these wolves are still being persecuted. Several states have enacted laws banning reintroduction of wolves, which would also apply to wolves crossing over the state's borders. Proposals to reintroduce wolves into Maine or New York have also been met with opposition by many (Higgins 2000). A major education program is needed to allay these fears and to train ranchers to protect their herds and flocks, compensating them for any losses. Although the detractors speak more loudly than the defenders of wolves, the latter probably far outnumber the former in the United States as a whole. It may fall to private conservation and humane organizations to turn the tide in favor of the wolves to return them to a greater percentage of their original range in the lower 48 states.