“From the time we started doing that in 2007 up to now, we’ve had zero wolf depredations,” Dobson said, sitting at the kitchen table of his family’s spacious log home on a private inholding surrounded by the Apache National Forest. “I think the fence has a lot to do with it.”
PHOENIX — They have startled the residents of Ahwatukee, a bedroom community in southern Phoenix. They have tramped on lawns and damaged vehicles in Rio Rancho, a neighborhood of tract homes outside Albuquerque. A Border Patrol agent lost his life crashing into one of them near the Mexican border in Texas. Read more in the NY Times.
The majority of Americans who do not hunt only accept hunting if they believe the hunter is killing an animal to eat it. Public support for hunting declines rapidly if hunters kill animals for trophy mounts. When it comes to shooting an animal just to kill it as would be the case for hunters shooting wolves—and/or worse as a matter of vindication as in predator control, public support turns to public opposition. …more
The wild population of Mexican gray wolves, excluding this year’s pups, stands at fewer than 42 animals. The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service is prohibited from releasing Mexican gray wolves directly from captivity into New Mexico, according to the Final Rule governing the reintroduction, but wolves in captivity that were once in the wild can be re-released into New Mexico. Roughly two-thirds of the available habitat for the lobos lies east of the Arizona state line in the Gila National Forest, but only about half of the wolves in the wild are currently in New Mexico.
