Wolves Gone Wild

We applaud the Mr Pearce and the Alamogordo Daily News reporter Karl Anderson for continuing to bring us the truth on the wolf program in the southwest.

Representative says wolf reintroduction is ‘ineffective’
Alamogordo Daily News
By Karl Anderson, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 12/20/2007 12:00:00 AM MST
Rep. Stevan Pearce is expressing his discontent with regards to the direction the Mexican gray wolf recovery program is heading in New Mexico.

“I am disappointed more of my colleagues could not see the wisdom in eliminating an unsuccessful, ineffective program that has not only failed to produce results, but also threatens the lives and livelihoods of New Mexicans,” he said. “We have tried the reintroduction program for 10 years and have seen only growing problems and more wolf-human interactions.”

Pearce said he believes the time has come to concede that wolves cannot successfully be reintroduced into New Mexico, and is disappointed Congress has not yet reached that view.

“I will continue working to ensure that we are protected from these captive-bred habituated wolves,” he said. “The Fish and Wildlife Service must take active steps to better manage problem wolves and guarantee that farmers, ranchers, their families, and their livestock are not repeatedly stalked and attacked.

“I will furthermore continue working to educate my colleagues with regards to the problems associated with this program.”

Pearce said the vote by Congress this past June to continue the recovery program was a setback. The congressman said he intends to put more pressure on those who he believes have only wasted tax dollars and created what he termed “a menace within our communities.”
“We have people in the Second District that can’t check their mail without taking a pistol to the mailbox for fear of being attacked,” Pearce said. “Without a federal compensation program for our ranchers, they are forced to bear the cost of lost livestock. They depend on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage the wolves off their livestock and property. “Unfortunately, the Service has proven that they are incapable or protecting the ranchers of the Second District from the growing number of captive-bred, habituated, problem wolves in the recovery program.”

But according to Eva Sargent, Southwest director for Defenders of Wildlife, the non-profit agency has and continues to reimburse ranchers for losses suffered by wolves.

“We have paid out nearly $100,000 since 1998,” she said in a recent interview. “That amount represents what we paid out collectively between 25 and 30 ranches, all of which were in New Mexico, Arizona or on the White Mountain Apache Reservation.”

Sargent said the program replaces specific animals.

“We pay fair market value,” she said. “If someone loses a heifer, for example, it replaces that heifer. So it replaces an animal that could have produced young with another that can produce young.”

“The congressman is familiar with that program,” said Brian Phillips, press secretary for Pearce. “The congressman has received feedback that tells us ranchers are not very happy with that program.”

Pearce said since its inception, the Mexican gray wolf reentry program has spent more than $14 million and released just 59 wolves at a cost of over $237,000 per wolf.

“This year, one out of every five of those wolves will be deemed ‘problem wolves’ and require that the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) hunt them down and removed them from the wild. The USFWS also spent additional resources on educating residents on how to protect themselves if they encounter wolves on their property.”

Pearce cited several reports he received from constituents who have witnessed numerous attacks by wolves.

“I have pictures of wolf tracks leading up to a corral right by someone’s house,” he said. “I have seen the bloody carcasses of livestock that have been attacked and eaten.

“We need to approach the problem with a little common sense.

“In the meantime, we shouldn’t be wasting more and more resources on a failed program that puts people’s lives and livelihoods in danger.”

Orginal Story

Otero County New Mexico seams to have learned from the horrible lessons in Catron and other neighboring counties.  Their blog website is out to educate residents about the wolf program and what is coming there way.  Good job Otero!!!

Be warned nuisance wolves will bother your community eat your pets, kill your horses, slaughter your cattle, ruin your hunting business.  This is what we have seen in our communities.  Does not matter if you are rich or poor the wolves do not care.  Your county tax base will go down.  Better start building school bus shelters and fencing school yards now.  As the wolves here show up at schools and even follow children home from school. 

Don’t worry because Defenders of Wildlife will also not compensate you as promissed either.

Does not mater if all you like to do is hike the wolves do not care they will still force you up a tree to save your life.  The wolf managers will do nothing and say it is your fault because you live in their territory.   The blame game.

Don’t let the wolves into your community.

Troubling wolf behavior reported
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
By Tim Mowry
Staff Writer
Published December 8, 2007

The furor caused by a bold, dog-eating pack of wolves in Two Rivers escalated on Friday when the Department of Fish and Game received an unconfirmed report of a wolf following a person near 15 Mile Chena Hot Springs Road.

“I got a phone call from someone who described a situation where a person was followed by a wolf,” said department spokeswoman Cathie Harms, reached by cell phone shortly after a press release about the incident was issued at 5 p.m. “If this is true, this is not a good sign.”

Officials hadn’t talked to the person who was allegedly followed and knew only that it was a “young person,” Harms said.

“All I know is it’s something we need to check on,” she said. “If it’s true, it’s the next level of habituation.”

Wolves can become habituated and lose their fear of humans when they approach people with no negative response, Harms said. Habituation can progress to the point where wolves show aggression toward people but so far that’s not the case, she said. In all of the previous accounts of wolf encounters with people in the area, the wolves ran away from people, Harms said.

“But if a wolf did follow someone, that indicates a higher level of habituation, which is grounds for concern,” she said.

The report came from almost the same place where the Department of Fish and Game is holding a public meeting on Sunday to discuss concerns over the wolves, which have been roaming back and forth between Two Rivers and North Pole for more than a month.

At least three dogs have been killed and eaten — two in Two Rivers and one in North Pole — and several residents living along Chena Hot Springs Road have reported seeing wolves in their yards or on trails in the area. State wildlife officials suspect it’s the same pack of five or six wolves that killed the dogs and have been seen by residents.

Department staff are following up on Friday’s report and hope to find out more before Sunday’s 5 p.m. meeting at the Two Rivers Church of the Nazarene, located at 14.9 Mile Chena Hot Springs Road. Biologists will share what information they have collected about the wolf pack at the meeting and will try to answer as many questions as possible, Harms said.

Several residents in the area have expressed concern about the safety of their children with wolves in the area and wildlife officials encourage parents to accompany their children to and from bus stops or while playing outside, Harms said.

If confronted by a wolf, a person should face the animal and either stand their ground or slowly back away, said Harms.

“Running from an aggressive dog increases the chance of a bite, and it’s similar for wolves,” she said.

If residents see wolves around their homes or on the trails, Harms said they should try to make the wolves uncomfortable by making loud noises, shooting at them or frightening them in a way that will encourage them to avoid humans.

Wolves can be shot in defense of life or property if they threaten people or domestic animals, Harms noted. She also said that hunting and trapping season for wolves is open as long as you have a hunting or trapping license. It should be noted, however, that it is illegal to shoot a wolf with a .22-caliber rifle because wolves are classified as big game in Alaska.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.

from today’s editorial page of the Albuquerque Journal! They get it!!!!

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Big Bad Wolf Scarier When It’s Right Outside By

Two schoolchildren in Reserve say they were followed by a wolf while walking from their bus stop to their home about a half-mile away. Because of that and incidents of attacks on pets and killing of livestock by the reintroduced wolves, Reserve Independent Schools Superintendent Loren Cushman decided to wolf-proof school bus stops. Some proponents of the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction deride the shelters as a public relations ploy. Others merely dismiss it as overreaction or hysteria. There’s little evidence that the wolves pose any real threat, they argue, and there has been only one recorded case of a human being killed by wolves in North America in the last 100 years. A century of experience with wild wolves, however, may not be the most accurate predictor of the behavior of these wolves. Raised in captivity in closer contact with humans than their ancestors would ever choose to be, they were fed instead of having to hunt down lunch, then set loose to figure out how to live in a different kind of world. These wolves come with no guarantees. Following children could be a behavior rooted in curiosity, not hunger. But it is easy to predict that most human mothers aren’t going to ponder the behavior of wolves if it involves their own pups. Superintendent Cushman said building the wolf-proof shelters, regardless of “whether a person is pro or con wolf,” is the right thing to do. Reserve parents and school officials say they feel better having a safe place for kids. It’s their decision to make, and it’s not costing taxpayers anywhere else in the state anything. It’s easy for city dwellers to mock or discount rural residents anxieties— too easy

Your tax dollars at work to protect hybrids

It should be noted that the majority of the people quoted in this article directly funded via wolf programs so their salaries are at risk if your tax payer support is removed for supporting the need to now protect wolf hybrids.  Just look at the red wolf hybrid news.

Note: that the Endangered Species Act does not protect animals like wolves that do not interbreed when mature.  The head of US Fish and Wildlife Service Southwestern Division even admited at a Wolf Meeting in Silver City, New Mexico 2007, that wolves breed with coyotes and dogs in a public meeting when asked.

From the ESA definition #16

(16) The term ‘‘species’’ includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species or vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature.

Wolves are noted to breed with other members of the dog family.  So based on the ESA the wolf is not a species or even a sub species
Do you really want to spend your tax dollars to support a wolf that is not even a wolf?  Read between the lines how they now want you to protect this hybrid as a distinct species, thus relisting the wolf hybrid and spending more of your tax dollars.

From the New York Times article

Amid much fanfare this year, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service declared the western Great Lakes gray wolf successfully recovered from an encounter with extinction and officially removed it from the endangered species list. Under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the wolf boomed in population to 4,000 in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin today, up from just several hundred in northern Minnesota in 1974.

But the victory celebration was premature, according to two evolutionary biologists, Jennifer A. Leonard of Uppsala University in Sweden and Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles. The historic Great Lakes wolf did not return intact from the edge of oblivion. Instead, the scientists report in the online edition of the journal Biology Letters, it hybridized with gray wolves moving in from Canada, coyotes from the south and west and the hybrids born of that mixing.

Wolf eradication programs and habitat destruction, followed by protection of the remaining wolves and habitat, created conditions for producing the hybrid animals, Dr. Leonard said. These animals should remain protected, she added, while researchers determine the full extent of hybridization with coyotes, whether it is continuing and whether it threatens to swamp the genetic heritage of the native wolf.

Rolf O. Peterson, a wolf ecologist at Michigan Technological University and the leader of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Eastern Gray Wolf Recovery Team, said it had been known for some time that hybridization between gray wolves and coyotes was happening in the region.

“What’s new in this paper,” he said, “is that they found no evidence of hybridization with coyotes in the historic samples — and no pure historic wolves in the current samples.”

“If the science committee had known about these findings,” he added, “we would have treated them seriously. We certainly would have liked to hold on to what was here 100 years ago. But I doubt that anything would have changed.”

The historic Great Lakes wolf is an enigma, with scientists debating whether it is a subspecies of gray wolf or a distinct species. The Fish and Wildlife Service officially considers the western Great Lakes wolf a “distinct population segment” of the gray wolf, found in a discrete geographic area.

That population today is made up largely of hybrids between the gray wolf and coyote, but some 31 percent of the animals carry genetic material from the native wolf, which appears to no longer exist in pure form. The researchers analyzed mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the mother and often used to distinguish lineages in humans and animals, from 17 early-20th century wolves and 68 contemporary wolves.

Responding to questions, several scientists saw no need to revisit the delisting in light of the new information.

“It is not clear what would be gained by keeping the Midwestern wolf population on the endangered species list,” said L. David Mech, a senior research scientist with the United States Geological Survey who has studied wolves for 50 years. “Whatever their genetic identity, there are over 4,000 wolves in the population, they are increasing rapidly, and are legally protected by the states.”

To answer the question genetically this hybrid is not a species.  It is a breed!  Just like specific breeds of dogs.

Here in the southwest Defenders of Wildlife, who claims at meetings to reimburse 100% for all confirmed wolf kills or vet expenses, we have seen time and time again how they fails to write the checks.  If they do write a check is often for less than 100%.  Your horse is worth $2000 to them as a top price. This time Defenders of Wildlife breaks their promises to compensate in Wyoming.  No doubt this will not be the first or the last time they reject a claim they promise publicly to pay. 

Of course they are still accepting your donations on the premise that they do reimburse.
  Thanks Cat Urbigkit, Pinedale Online! For continuing to cover this important topic so the public knows their donations to Defenders of Wildlife are not really being used for the intended purpose.  Thanks for helping to expose what is going on with Defenders of Wildlife. 

I feel saddened for the animals that get injured and killed and also the people that continue to get jerked around by the environMental Extreme.  More details about the life threatening injuries this mule Bonny endured in this earlier story.   

In August 2006, a mule was attacked by a wolf or wolves while in a pasture northwest of Pinedale. Bonny, who is owned by Wolf Lake Outfitters, suffered numerous wounds, including having the base of her ears chewed up, gashes to her hocks and life-threatening wounds to her stomach, according to Todd Stevie, had the job of tending to the mule which somehow managed to survive the attack.“They had her down,” Stevie said of the wolf attack, yet Bonny managed to get back up and escape, hurt but alive.

Federal wildlife officials were quick to confirm that a wolf or wolves was responsible for the damage.  

I also guess if a wolf was to run your mule through a fence that also would not count as damage.   This is what wolf recovery looks like!  Carnage. 

Another word on wolf compensation - Never send Defenders photos of damage
by Cat Urbigkit, Pinedale Online!  Orginal Story
November 30, 2007
Todd Stevie is simply the most current Sublette County, Wyoming livestock producer who has been denied compensation for damages caused by wolves. The story of the attack on Stevie’s mule was detailed here a few days ago. Although USDA Wildlife Services personnel confirmed that the damage to the mule was caused by a wolf or wolves, a full year after the event, Defenders of Wildlife sent Stevie a letter denying his claim. 

So what’s up with this? Defenders likes to tout how it fully compensates producers for damages. Stevie’s experience demonstrates the fallacity of Defenders’ statements. Unfortunately, he’s not alone. Defenders was never on the scene, never saw the mule, yet it claims its own experts determined that the damages were consistent with what could have been caused by a barbed-wire fence. This, even though Wildlife Services experts had already examined the ACTUAL ANIMAL and found it had been attacked by a wolf or wolves. 

The lesson learned is this - if you’re ever in the position of seeking reimbursement from Defenders of Wildlife for wolf predation, never send photos in with your claim. This is what Defenders used to deny Stevie’s claim. Animal damage control experts have even testified in court that photographs don’t tell the whole story. Scratch marks on the surface of an animal’s hide won’t show the depth of the puncture wounds caused by canid teeth, nor the amount of tissue damage caused by biting with powerful jaws. When it comes to wolf damage, it’s all below the surface. 

So for what it’s worth, take this advice: Do not include photographs with an application for wolf predation reimbursement from Defenders of Wildlife.  You can read more at Wolf Watch 

A few days ago a wolf that was seen in the town of Glenwood, New Mexico and on Nov 20, 2007 the wolf stalked the school playground.  The school was in lockdown.  Bill Richardson was given another chance to be concerned about our children’s safety. 

Yet again like times before Bill Richardson fails to protect children and panders to the environMental extreme by spending untold taxpayer dollars to look for some habituated home stalking Mexican Gray Wolves. 

“The disappearance of the Durango Pack of endangered Mexican Gray Wolves is a disturbing development in our efforts to recover this important species in New Mexico and Arizona,” he said. “I am asking the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to redouble their efforts to locate these wolves. The New Mexico Department of Game & Fish stands ready to help with this effort as needed.”

Yes the Durango pack is missing but a wolf stalking a school gave this presidential candidate a chance to show he cared for children’s safety.  But Bill Richardson loves his wolves not your children.

Note:  Bill Richardson said nothing on this wolf incident.  No redoubling efforts to protect children.  No requests to collar this uncollared wolf.  Nothing.  Are you children safe with Bill Richardson in the White House?

Some of the horse killing wolves to be removed. But no doubt more pups have been trained to kill.

The trapping will have to be done on private property because that is where these wolves keep hanging out.  

Again the Apathetic Press (AP) missed that part of the story because these wolves keep showing up and doing their killing on our land even on our porches. I wonder if a killer trespassed on their personal property that would be ok?

Why are we leaving these bad wolves on the ground for so long? More wolves set to be removed from Gila

This wolf, which weighs as much as 180 pounds, escaped on the 29th and the owner failed to report the escape as a responsible citizen would do.  There has also been time to see if this animal was property registered and tagged.  Communities were put at risk when this habituated wolf was allowed to run free. This person should be charged with endangering children.  This owner should be in some hot water.

Escaped wolf captured and put down in Owyhee County
Idaho Press-Tribune Staff
newsroom@idahopress.com 
Updated 13 hours 51 minutes ago
A domesticated wolf at large in Owyhee County was captured and put down today after a resident spotted the injured animal this morning.

The animal is thought to have killed one sheep and maimed two others after escaping from its pen in late October.
A deputy from the Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office and an official from Idaho Fish and Game Conservation responded to the residence where the wolf had been located around 10:30 a.m. The animal appeared injured on one leg and the Fish and Game officer decided the only option was to destroy the animal.

Officials had feared that the animal might pose a danger to humans, due to its familiarity with people, spurring a week-long search by multiple agencies.

Authorities originally planned to capture the animal, but officials with the Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office said that the wolf was destroyed when they determined it could not be approached close enough to tranquilize.

It is legal in Idaho to own wolves or hybrids that display wolf characteristics, provided that a $10 annual permit is obtained for each animal. The animal’s ears must also be tattooed to help distinguish them from wild wolves in the event of an escape.

An investigation is ongoing into whether or not the escaped wolf had the required tattoo— and whether or not the owner violated a requirement that she quickly report the escape.
Original Story

School on lockdown due to wolf stalking children

Friday, November 30, 2007 children at the Glenwood school in New Mexico had a wolf stalking children at their play ground.  The uncollared wolf appeared and was about 17 yards from the playground.  The school was quickly locked down.

The county wolf investigator was called out to cast tracks and look for other wolf evidence.

In 2005 the school in Blue Arizona was also stalked by the Aspen wolves who were later relocated to New Mexico and have been involved in various attacks and kills including slaughtering a little girls horse.

Is this what the wolf lovers were looking for when they support wolf recovery?