By Jess Carey
When I looked for a title for the following factual wolf information, I had to look at the folks most impacted by Mexican Wolf Recovery. Many rural family ranchers have lost their peace of mind, lost their dreams, lost their pursuit of happiness, lost their livestock and lost their ranches. Collateral Damage Identification seemed appropriate. All damage was due to non-compensated wolf caused livestock losses, a “taking” by Federal wolves administered by Federal agencies and our own New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. These agencies will and have push Mexican Wolf Recovery forward knowing that their wolves are destroying family rancher’s ability to survive, in the end selling off their ranches. In fact, lost family ranchers are collateral damage to achieve Mexican Wolf Recovery.
The purpose of the contained information is for you to be able to identify wolf presence in your area. People that do not have wolves on them yet and people who live outside the Mexican Wolf Recovery Area (BRWRA) are unaware of what to look for to identify wolf activity. Wolves travel a long distance and could be in your area. Unidentified depredations on livestock, killed pets and farm animals could be wolf interactions attributed to other causes.
Un-collared wolves have dispersed from the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area (BRWRA) to other counties and parts of the State of New Mexico and Arizona. Look at the wolves put into the Yellowstone National Park, within a few years wolves dispersed from Yellowstone into Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.
Un-collared Mexican wolves have had 12 years to disperse into other parts of the state of New Mexico. Breeding and having offspring with other un-collared wolves, they in turn repeat the process. This is part of the hidden strategy of Mexican Wolf Recovery they do not talk or tell you about. This is also why the USFWS do not collar all wolves. The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish (the lead wolf recovery agency in New Mexico) are depending on un-collared wolf dispersals to saturate New Mexico and Arizona with wolves. The information in this document should help you identify wolf activity and who to call for an investigation to document wolf activity.
It is clear that wolf recovery agencies are managing family ranchers and not wolves. Now, the US Forest Service has entered Mexican Wolf Recovery big time and will be putting all types of wolf directives on the permitted grazing allotments.
Wolf agencies will tell you they have a solution for deprecating livestock killing wolves or habituated wolves who seek our humans and human use areas. Habituated wolves lack an avoidance response to humans and are bold, and fearless. Habituated wolves come to your home and in your front yard where your children play.
Non-positive wolf agency solutions for problem wolves are; hazing wolves away, supplemental feeding (to stop wolves from killing livestock), flaggery (flags on a shocking wire), and bang/rag boxes (to scare wolves). Some non-lethal schemes may work short term, but do not solve the problem of wolves killing livestock or cure flawed habituated wolves. What these non-lethal schemes do accomplish is give the wolf agencies something to write down in their reports to show their upper bosses that they have attempted to fix the problem knowing full well they will fail and prolong the problem.
There is only one positive cure for problem wolves and that is to remove them, period.
