Fish and Wildlife Service Name Endangered Species Recovery Champion Awards

US (3/20/12)—The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced recipients of the 2011 Recovery Champion award, which honors Service employees and partners for outstanding efforts to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species of fish, wildlife, and plants. “¦

“Recovery Champions are helping listed species get to the point at which they are secure in the wild and no longer need Endangered Species Act protection,” said Service Director Dan Ashe. “These groups and individuals have done amazing work in helping to bring dozens of species back from the brink of extinction, while improving habitat that benefits many other species and local communities.”

“¦  Service employees and partners, including federal and state conservation agencies, tribes, universities, conservation organizations, private landowners, and zoos and botanic gardens, are making a difference through activities such as removing dams so that anadromous fish can reach their spawning grounds, restoring longleaf pine forests in the Southeast, and reintroducing an endangered bird species into its historical range.

For example, the Turner Endangered Species Fund (TESF) is being recognized for its work in endangered species recovery programs over several decades.  “¦

Notably, the TESF has been active and supportive in gray wolf recovery in the United States, both in the Northern Rocky Mountains and in the Southwest. Since 1997, the Ladder Ranch Wolf Management Facility, located on R.E. Turner’s Ladder Ranch in south-central New Mexico and operated by TESF is one of the program’s three primary captive pre-release facilities and has been instrumental in housing and selectively breeding Mexican wolves for release to the wild.

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Restoring streams, releasing listed species into their historical ranges, and conducting field surveys and monitoring programs are among the diversity of initiatives by this year’s Recovery Champions. What began in Fiscal Year 2002 as a one-time award for Service staff members for achievements in conserving listed species was reactivated in 2007 and expanded to honor Service partners as well, recognizing their essential role in the recovery of threatened and endangered species.

For information about the 2011 Recovery Champions, please visit: http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/recovery-champions/index.html.

America’s fish, wildlife and plant resources belong to all of us, and ensuring the health of imperiled species is a shared responsibility. To learn more about the Service’s Endangered Species program, go to http://www.fws.gov/endangered/.

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Posted by Luke Short—SurfKY News
Surfky News Group, March 20, 2012

Read the full article here.

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Take this opportunity to write a letter to US Fish and Wildlife Director, Benjamin Tuggle, RDTuggle@fws.gov, and Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar: exsec@ios.doi.gov, thanking them for recognizing the important work that these Service employees and partners do for our endangered and threatened species.  Tell them that the Mexican gray wolf should be a priority in their recovery programs, as it is the most endangered mammal in North America.

In your message, you can include the points below, but please use your own words so that your message will be more effective:

* Mexican gray wolves need to live wild, and wild places need them.

* New releases of wolves into the wild are needed badly to bolster the population of only 58 wolves that remain in the wild. Newly released wolves will not only increase population numbers but will also improve the wild population’s genetics.

* The AZ Game and Fish Commission’s decision to oppose new releases makes changing the rule to allow direct releases into New Mexico even more critical than ever.

* There have been no releases of new Mexican wolves into the wild since November 2008. As the agency with ultimate authority and responsibility for restoring the Mexican wolf, the US Fish and Wildlife Service should be doing anything it can do to confirm its commitment to the wolf’s success in the wild.

* Talk about who you are and why Mexican wolf recovery is important to you, personally.

Please add your name and address at the end, because anonymous letters get little attention. Remember, too, that polite requests are more effective.

You can find background information on what is delaying the release of more Mexican wolves into the wild in this article.

Send your e-mail to Director Benjamin Tuggle at RDTuggle@fws.gov and Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar: exsec@ios.doi.gov.

Please send us a copy as well, so that we can track the actions taken to save these wonderful animals.