Re-imagining Mexican gray wolf recovery

Mexican gray wolf pup. (Image credit: AZGFD)

People familiar with the reintroduction program for the Mexican gray wolf know that the animal’s continued conservation has come only at the cost of great perseverance and a good dose of politics. Mexican wolves are not as well known to most Americans as their cousins, the northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves. But within the Southwest, Mexican wolves are high profile animals. Not visibly — there are only 52 individuals wandering in the “wild” – and visitors to their reintroduction area are not likely to spy them on a one-day outing. But the animals are ever-present in the minds of environmentalists working to restore them as well as people that live in or near the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. This habitat is a block of federal land controlled by the U.S. Forest Service, and filled with people, towns, schools, lots of domestic cattle and lots of rugged open space. Most of the land used for their habitat has been leased to ranchers for many years prior to the wolves’ reintroduction effort. And let’s suffice it to say there has been significant local opposition and exaggerated rhetoric, on all sides, centered on the animal’s return.  Previously, I’ve written about the land and the social context here and here. (For more on the restoration area’s characteristics, check out pages 18-20 from my 2008 thesis. And for a good recent news story giving background to the controversy, read AP writer Susan Montoya Bryan’s story here, but be sure to also check out Ralph Maughan’s rebuttal here. Other recent news articles here, here and here.)

But a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to listen to the new Mexican Wolf  Recovery Coordinator, Bud Fazio, talk about a new direction he’s going to take the program in. {1} It’s clear that the direction of the program is changing – but the question in the mind of most environmentalists and ranchers is: Which way will it swing, and how far?  Fazio’s presentation was directed to an audience of about 75 people at a session during the Defenders of Wildlife 2009 Carnivores Conference in Denver, Color. Fazio’s record of managing North Carolina’s endangered red wolf population is impressive, and if he can carry that same restorative streak to Arizona and New Mexico, it may be a new dawn for the Mexican gray wolf’s future. (Just a note, I don’t cover all the proposed changes in this post.)

He began by acknowledging that past mistakes had been made, and had cost the lives of wolves, but he said the new structure of the program would remedy these. Among the new actions he discussed for the restructuring were possibly changing the listing status under the Endangered Species Act, and he hinted that they were going to move toward a subspecies listing. (This differs from the current listing, which is only C. lupus – the parent species, with all subspecies such as C. l. baileyi falling under the parent species umbrella listing.) Listing it separately could afford the species stronger protections.

Blue Range Wolf Reintroduction Area (Click to enlarge)

He said they were also examining conducting releases in the Secondary Zone, which basically translates to opening up more of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area to releases from captivity. currently only a narrow slice of land in southeastern Arizona is legally designated for releases from captivity. (See the pink rectangle on the map to the left, which is the Primary Zone, versus the broader orange Secondary Zone.)

But perhaps the change that brought the biggest sigh of relief, even murmurs of approval, to the environmentalists in the crowd was his announcement of the dissolution of an agreement where the FWS informally granted control of the program’s management to the state game and fish departments for AZ and NM. Known as the Memorandum of Understanding, this document had eroded control from the FWS and allowed for a more intensive management of the wolves than should have ever occurred. Some environmentalists say that the state game and fish departments were too stuck in a “control” mindset and that did not have the political will to stand behind recovery goals for the species. Perhaps that is true to some extent, but in my mind the issue here is one of needing a very firm top-down federal control and oversight to get the population numbers up to where they can be self-sustaining, before handing the control back to the states. Clearly, the states have not been able to do that so far, so it’s refreshing to re-imagine what the FWS may be able to do.

Another exciting possibility he mentioned is a decision to accord any Mexican wolves that cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. full “endangered” status. [Note: a wolf advocate friend of mine has corrected me here saying, "I don’t know if this was a decision as much as just a fact. It is that way because the 10j area doesn’t extend to the border.  It's not something new in other words."] Previously, I’d heard rumors that Arizona Game and Fish had been pressuring Mexican officials to backburner their own Mexican wolf reintroduction plans so that the state could revise their political boundaries so that any wandering wolves from Mexico could have control measures exerted on them (e.g. trap and remove, or shoot, or otherwise manage). But according them full endangered status yields a strict hands-off management practice, and biologically speaking, this is just what the animal needs at this point in time. (Not that this will make all the stakeholders happy. I’m sure that some are gnashing their teeth just thinking about it.)

It’s worth it to note that not many Fish and Wildlife employees were at this conference or in this talk (I think I spied Ed Bangs and Mike Jimenez there), and some in the crowd worked for environmental groups that have repeatedly sued the Fish and Wildlife Service over the Mexican wolf’s conservation status. In fact, most environmentalists don’t take a very cozy view of the FWS’s handling of the reintroduction program to date. In the past, the program was run with some key management policies that ultimately prevented the Mexican wolves from establishing a functioning population. One of the most visible policies in the past few years has been a “three strikes rule” which allowed the states to remove wolves determined to have preyed upon domestic livestock three times within one calendar year. This rule, known as Standard Operating Procedure 13, gave the ranchers a sense of control over the situation, and some told me during my interviewing project with them that “without it, we’re sunk.” {2} Meaning, they felt that if this rule were taken away, they’d have no way of protecting their cattle, and their businesses would go under.

Personally, I do not believe the survival of their businesses depend upon just this one rule. I think their businesses were suffering from climate change affects, lack of water and forage, globalization and the vertical integration of the beef business – but that is just my opinion and I’m sure I’ll draw the ire of many wolf-affected individuals for even just voicing this. As political scientist Martin Nie {3} wrote in his study on the sociopolitical dimensions of wolf restoration, “As one rancher informed me, ‘while international markets and corporations can be quite complex, wolves are relatively simple and can fit straight into the scope of a rifle.’ ” (Nie 2001, 8). This quote tidily sums up my own on-the-ground observations of the situation in the Blue Range.

Removing the three-strikes rule will no doubt keep more Mexican wolves alive, breeding and on the landscape. But will angered ranchers and hunters shoot more wolves out of spite, because they feel their last bit of control was stolen away with the dissolution of this rule? I hate to think that would happen, but “Shoot, Shovel and Shut-up” could be the binding unspoken code that gels these rural communities together against what they perceive to be the interloping threat to their community: reintroduced wolves. (To be clear, I don’t blame rurality itself for this problem. I too live in a semi-rural area. I need only go a mile down the road to start seeing the tobacco and corn farms, family dairies and beef cattle ranches. While I myself don’t farm — I’m a writer, blogger and occasional science journalist — I have been following the social issues of the Mexican gray wolf program for more than four years.) Rather, in the case of the Mexican gray wolf, the stressed and scarce local natural resources (water and forage), lack of economic opportunity and a predator guild that expands to coyotes, black bears and cougars all contribute pressures on ranchers that make their business really freakin’ tough to pull a decent a living out of anymore. (One rancher told me that his family netted $12,000 in 2006; another told me that they can expect to turn a profit of 1 to 2 percent off their investment, their herd, each year – very slim profit margins, which may explain why they are fighting so darn hard against the wolves.)

Getting back on track, removal of the 3-strikes rules sounds great on paper – the wildlife managers entrusted with safeguarding this species will no longer be trapping and shooting them to remove them to captivity for preying on livestock. More wolves on the ground, right? But what about the flip side of this? How will rural citizens deal with this, when the mentality was that it was their only accessibly point of control? In order for this to work to the wolves’ benefit – Yes, I am biased in that I want to see wolves recovered in this bit of land – then the FWS is going to have to be prepared to do a lot more intensive monitoring of the wild population, and thoroughly investigate people who are accused or suspected of shooting wolves illegally. This takes money and manpower, and I hope they have both in reserve. For example, in the first year of the reintroduction program, someone illegally shot five wolves with what many environmentalists say was a high-powered hunting rifle. This person literally tracked the animals and shot them in cold blood – sending a clear message as to what they thought of the animal, the program, and the law (very little). From an LA Times article:

The first year of the reintroduction set the tone for a troubled program. The first wolf released was illegally shot and killed. Four more met the same fate. The first Mexican wolf pup born in the wild in more than 70 years was presumed dead after its mother was shot. By the end of the year, the Fish and Wildlife Service recaptured the rest of the released wolves and penned them for their own safety. {4}

Such actions have never been prosecuted which, no matter how the FWS truly judges it, leaves an open impression that they will implicitly allow these incursions to happen. Investigations MUST be done, arrests made, and fines levied if Mexican wolves “go missing” and their telemetry collars mysteriously stop working and can’t be found (as happened to the Durango pack in fall 2007) – or else, with no negative reinforcement, the Shoot, Shovel and Shut-Up mentality could very well rule the day and undermine the program’s longevity in a severe backlash. (Think: more Durango-pack-like unexplained disappearances.)

We can only sit tight for now, and wait for the FWS to issue its revised Environmental Impact Statement. I’m told this is due out in January or February of 2010. The new EIS will formalize all the management changes discussed here, plus some others. Perhaps 2010 will be the dawn of a new decade for Mexican gray wolves — perhaps the Service will completely re-imagine what Mexican wolf recovery looks like — a feat that was unheard of in 1982 when the first Mexican wolf recovery plan was drafted.

NOTES:
{1} Post is based on my reflections of Bud Fazio’s talk in Denver in November at the Carnivores 2009 conference hosted by the Defenders of Wildlife.
{2} Interview notes from my 2008 thesis.
{3} Martin A. Nie. 2001. The Sociopolitical  Dimensions of Wolf Management and Restoration in the United States. Human Ecology  Review, Vol. 8,  No. 1.
{4} Cart, Julie. July 26, 2009. Recovery of Mexican gray wolves remains elusive. Los Angeles Times.

*****
Addendum:
I neglected to include links to the conservation groups advocating for the Mexican gray wolf. This list is adapted from the one on MexicanWolves.org, but includes a few more not listed on their site:

Animal Defense League of Arizona
Animal Protection of New Mexico
Arizona Zoological Society
Center for Biological Diversity
California Wolf Center
Defenders of Wildlife
Grand Canyon Wildlands Council
Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project
International Wolf Center
New Mexico Audubon Council
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
The Rewilding Institute
Sierra Club-Grand Canyon Chapter
Sierra Club-Rio Grande Chapter
Sky Island Alliance
Southwest Environmental Center
UNM Wilderness Alliance
Western Environmental Law Center
Western Watersheds Project
White Mountain Conservation League
WildEarth Guardians
Wildlands Network
Wild Canid Center
Wolf Park

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