Alert: Keep Making Calls-Fox Mountain Mother Wolf Still in Wild!
As long as the Fox Mountain alpha female remains in the wild with her pups and pack, your continued efforts to help her are making a difference.
Calls and emails from wolf supporters clearly made a difference when the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) withdrew the order to kill her. Public support helped U.S. Congressman Grijalva send the USFWS a letter expressing strong concerns about plans to take the Fox Mountain alpha female from her family and place her in permanent captivity. And in the past few weeks, news stories, editorials, and guest columns about the Fox Mountain pack’s plight have appeared in the press all over the country. The public outcry on behalf of these critically endangered wolves has been hard to ignore.
We need to keep the message coming, loud and strong. Although she has not yet been captured, the USFWS still intends to place this endangered wolf in permanent captivity. This will still be hard on her pups and pack. It won’t help the wild population of only 58 Mexican gray wolves. And it’s the wrong way to deal with livestock issues.
Please call the USFWS, the White House, and your members of congress again. Share this message with everyone you know and ask them to do the same. As long as the Fox Mountain mother wolf remains free, we will fight to keep her that way.
Here are three key points to make when you call:
1. The Fox Mountain alpha female should be left in the wild
Wolves are social animals that rely on family members in hunting and pup rearing. Trapping or darting this wolf, and removing her forever, will likely have the same effect on her family as killing her. And it will set us back to the policy of scapegoating wolves who occasionally prey on livestock — even when, as in this instance, the stock-owner is reimbursed.
2. The US Fish and Wildlife Service should release many more wolves, not remove them.
At last count, just 58 wolves including six breeding pairs survive in the wild. If the USFWS is truly concerned about the growth of the population and its genetic health, the answer is more releases of captive wolves, not more wild wolves placed in captivity. Instead of removing this mother from her pups and mate, the Service needs to focus on expediting releases of many more wolves from captivity to strengthen the wild population.
3. Removing or killing critically endangered Mexican gray wolves is not the solution to livestock conflicts.
The USFWS has not removed or killed a Mexican wolf due to livestock losses since 2007. There are many solutions to conflicts between livestock and wolves, but there are very few Mexican gray wolves. In this case, when range riders were present, no livestock losses occurred. Deterrents to livestock conflicts are the solutions, not removing this wolf family’s alpha female.
White House number: 202-456-1111
USFWS in Washington, DC Public number: 1-800-344-9453
USFWS Southwest Regional Office
External Affairs Office: 505-248-6911
Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator: 505-761-4748
Main Office: 505-248-6920
Your Congressional representatives (click here to find numbers)
Your Senators (click here to find numbers)
You can tell your members of Congress that Congressman Raul Grijalva recently sent a letter to the US Fish and Wildlife Service expressing his concerns over the impacts of removing this mother wolf from the wild, and ask them to do the same. Read the letter here.
Phone calls usually carry more weight than emails, but if you absolutely can’t call, here are email contacts:
White House https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
USFWS Southwest Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle RDTuggle@fws.gov or Benjamin_Tuggle@fws.gov
USFWS Acting Southwest Regional Director Joy Nicholopoulos Joy_Nicholopoulos@fws.gov
Your Congressional representatives (click here to find emails)
Your Senators (click here to find emails)
New Mexico Senator Udall: http://www.tomudall.senate.gov/?p=contact
New Mexico Senator Bingaman: http://www.bingaman.senate.gov/contact/types/email-issue.cfm
Once you’ve acted, we’d appreciate an email to let us know: info@mexicanwolves.org
Thank you again for all you do for the Mexican wolves and this wolf family! They would thank you too, if they could.
CLICK HERE to join our email list to stay informed and get more involved with efforts to recover Mexican wolves from the brink of extinction.
Artwork courtesy of Miki Wolf Krenelka
