Wildlife Agency Is ‘Collaborating’ Gray Wolf to Death, By Michael J. Robinson, Center for Biological Diversity
One runs a risk rejecting a call for a "reasonable compromise" issued by a public official inveighing against "polarized groups." But the endangered Mexican gray wolf has been compromised so many times, and consequently is so close to extinction, that we must scrutinize any proposed compromise. …
The recovery area’s carrying capacity was analyzed in the 2001 three-year review, also known as the Paquet Report for its lead author, Paul C. Paquet of the University of Calgary. Paquet is one of the world’s leading wolf biologists, and his three colleagues in the review brought additional expertise in wolf recovery, population demographics and statistical analysis.
Unlike the authors of the five-year review, none of the authors of the three-year review are affiliated with government agencies, and three of them are in academia. The Paquet Report concluded, looking at elk and deer availability and not counting bighorn sheep, pronghorn, javelina and beaver, all of which wolves eat, that the recovery area could support between 213 and 468 wolves.
But this past January, a year after the area was projected to reach the reintroduction project’s goal of 100 wolves with an estimated 18 breeding pairs, a count revealed only 52 wolves and three breeding pairs.
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Win-Win Possible for Wolf Recovery, By Benjamin N. Tuggle, Southwest Regional Director, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
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Federal agency gets 13,000 comments on wolf plans – Las Cruces Sun-News
The Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—Many of the more than 13,000 people commenting on how to improve U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to reintroduce the Mexican wolf into the wild either strongly support or object to the program. Problem is, that’s not the question.
The federal agency took public comments from Aug. 7 to Dec. 31 on how best to pursue the wolf reintroduction program, not whether or not the program should exist.
The agency received comments from 13,598 people after its call for public input and divided the responses into 26 topics.