OPINION: Catron County’s response to wolves doesn’t make sense

The recent meeting of the Catron County Commission to pass a resolution declaring a disaster due to Mexican wolves was equal parts political theater and a kangaroo court. The recovery program was on trial and the jury was rigged. The outcome was assured before the meeting even started.

But the actions that Catron County and the ranchers are seeking are inherently contradictory. They are seeking to “Defund Mexican wolf” while simultaneously seeking nearly $1 million more dollars from the state. They want the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and New Mexico Department of Game and Fish to collar every wolf, an expensive proposition, but with what money? They want someone — but who? — to provide location information to ranchers so they can find depredations, while simultaneously calling to slash the program’s budget. There are already real staffing issues in the agencies working on wolves, and defunding the program will make this all impossible.

Worse, they want to “Delist Mexican wolf,” and remove it from Endangered Species Act protection. The Endangered Species law doesn’t allow the delisting of species until they are fully recovered and no longer at risk of extinction. Given that the ranchers are also asking the service to let them kill wolves on private property and public lands, or to get the federal wildlife services program to do it for them, it doesn’t appear that the risk of extinction is going away any time soon. Delisting the Mexican wolf would also have the same effect as defunding; there would be no federal investment in the program, no Fish and Wildlife Service involvement, and no money coming from the service to compensate ranchers for depredations.

Now is not the time to delist or defund the Mexican wolf recovery program, but it may be time to make some changes: Let wolves expand into northern Arizona and northern New Mexico to alleviate some of the density in Catron County. Reduce public lands stocking rates during droughts to help native wildlife survive, thereby increasing wolves’ natural prey base. Teach residents how to use fladry and foxlights and airhorns to haze wolves away from their houses. Encourage people to reach for their cameras instead of their sidearms when they see a wolf so that anecdotal accounts become data points that can be used by managers. Remind folks that keeping an eye on their children and a leash on their pets is just common sense in wild country. And stop believing fairy tales about the big, bad wolf.