Ranches With Wolves: Can livestock owners—and their cows—learn to live with the lobos?

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:




Ranches With Wolves
Can livestock owners—and their cows—learn to live with the lobos?

— By Kiera Butler


ONE WARM EVENING early last summer, I found myself in New Mexico's Gila wilderness at Bucky's BBQ Bash. Beyond celebrating the birthday of Bucky Allred, garrulous owner of the Blue Front Bar and Café (one of two bars in tiny Glenwood), the annual shindig has a higher purpose: raising money to help ranchers get rid of wolves.

By the time I arrived, the party was in full swing. The lot was packed with dirt-encrusted Dodge Rams bearing bumper stickers like "WOLVES: GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED TERRORISTS." Preschoolers in Wranglers and cowboy hats darted around the line snaking from a pavilion where a beef brisket had been smoking all day. As the sun set over piñon-and-juniper-studded hills, a man took the stage and played "The Star-Spangled Banner" on his fiddle before leading the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. Reese and Chance, young brothers in pearl-snap shirts, shyly approached the mic. They had given every last penny of their allowances to an anti-wolf group called Americans for Preservation of Western Environment to help protect their dad's cows. The crowd cheered.

The way these folks were talking, you'd think wolves had all but taken over the Gila. Not exactly. The day before, I'd seen wolf country firsthand. Cathy Taylor, a veteran wildlife biologist with the US Forest Service, picked me up from my motel in her Chevy 2500 pickup. As we climbed the switchbacks, open ranchlands gave way to Ponderosa pines and Gambel oaks—the edge of the Mogollon range. A bear cub scampered out in front of us. We pulled off onto an unpaved service path, where Taylor gestured to a dense swath of forest. "This is where the Dark Canyon pack is denning," she said. I asked whether we might see a wolf. Taylor smiled and shook her head. "I really doubt it."

In 1998, the US Fish and Wildlife Service released 11 captive-bred Mexican gray wolves into the newly created Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area—comprising some 10,000 square miles within the Gila and Apache-Sitgreaves national forests. The Mexican gray, often simply called lobo, disappeared from the wild in 1970, and wildlife authorities hoped the reintroductions would help restore balance to the ecosystem. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/04/new-mexico-gray-wolf-reintroduction

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[abqmufc]

2. It is ranchers who need to be phased out....

[Nihil]

3. Agreed. (n/t)