In the News: People: Ted Turner to receive award for endangered species work
April Reese, E&E reporter
The Fish and Wildlife Service tomorrow will present media mogul and conservationist Ted Turner and the Turner Endangered Species Fund with its 2011 “recovery champion award” for the organization’s efforts to restore habitat and reintroduce imperiled species to several Turner ranches.
The Turner Endangered Species Fund, which has worked with FWS on endangered species recovery for more than a decade, will receive the award from FWS Director Dan Ashe at a community dinner tomorrow evening at the Ladder Ranch, a Turner property in south-central New Mexico. The day’s events will also include presentations on recovery efforts for individual species and the capture of a Mexican wolf, which will be temporarily moved to the nearby Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge while repairs are made at the Ladder Ranch facility.
“The service is extremely grateful for, and I am personally inspired by, TESF’s work and contribution toward advancing knowledge and recovery efforts for so many endangered species,” said Benjamin Tuggle, FWS’s Southwest regional director, who will also be on hand for the ceremony. The organization “serves as an example, and sets a high bar of accomplishment, for other collaborative conservation efforts throughout the country,” he added.
Turner Endangered Species Fund Executive Director Mike Phillips will also attend the ceremony, along with FWS Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator Sherry Barrett and other officials.
The Ladder Ranch Wolf Management Facility is one of three primary captive pre-release facilities in the United States and has housed and selectively bred Mexican wolves since 1997 for release into the wild. The species is one of the most endangered land mammals in the United States, with about 58 wolves surviving in the wild, all in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona. “¦
Reese writes from Santa Fe, N.M.
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The USFWS has not released a new Mexican gray wolf into the wild in over 3 and a half years! Write today and tell USFWS SW regional director Tuggle to release more wolves into the wild.
Photo Credit: Mexican gray wolf Paquito (M190) at Sevilleta, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service
