Press Release: Governor Martinez Ends New Mexico’s Cooperation With Feds on Endangered Wolves

For Immediate Release, June 10, 2011

Contact: Michael Robinson, (575) 534-0360

LAS CRUCES, N.M.—  Gov. Susana Martinez’s state game commission voted unanimously Thursday evening to stop cooperating with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in reintroducing the endangered Mexican gray wolf, a project that began in 1998 with state participation from the outset. The vote disappointed a passionate crowd of about 100 wolf supporters who had rallied before the commission meeting and flouted the recommendations of 13 state and national conservation groups that had written to the governor to applaud the game department’s role in wolf recovery and suggest improvements.

“New Mexico’s governor sided with an intransigent, wolf-hating livestock industry,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Ironically, withdrawing state participation will undercut successful proactive efforts to prevent wolf-livestock conflicts, and could lead to an increase in livestock losses.”

The New Mexico Game and Fish Department has played important roles in reducing conflict over wolves, including helping keep calves from the immediate vicinity of the Dark Canyon Pack’s den in the Gila National Forest and providing food for the Middle Fork Pack (also in the Gila and led by a pair of three-legged alpha wolves) so that they would not resort to killing cattle. Last year, in large part due to game department efforts, wolves killed only nine cattle in New Mexico and Arizona.

Livestock-industry groups, which had repeatedly litigated and gone to Congress seeking to compel government shooting and trapping of wolves and end wolf releases, were furious that state wildlife biologists (with the support of former Gov. Bill Richardson) had persuaded the Fish and Wildlife Service not to destroy the Middle Fork and San Mateo wolf packs when they preyed on cattle in 2008 and 2009. Stock owners were indemnified for their losses; the wolves ceased killing stock and resumed preying on elk.

At last count in January of this year, only 50 wolves, including just two breeding pairs, could be found in New Mexico and Arizona. Federal trapping and shooting of wolves suppressed their numbers and contributed to inbreeding, but from 2008 through the present wolves have been spared from official persecution, and the number of depredations on livestock decreased year-by-year as well.

“We are worried that without New Mexico biologists’ help, wolves will prey on untended cattle in the Gila National Forest, and the livestock industry that demanded withdrawal of the state from management will then demand the trapping and shooting of the hapless wolves,” said Robinson.
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PLEASE WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR TODAY.
In your letter, you can talk about the tremendous importance of Mexican wolves to the Southwest, point out that this decision does not reflect the will of the people in New Mexico who overwhelmingly support the reintroduction program, and call on Governor Martinez and the NM Game Commission to reverse this harmful decision against a beautiful animal that has only around 50 members left in the wild.

Here are editorial contacts for papers that have published stories on the NM Game Commission’s decision:
Los Angeles Times   letters@latimes.com
Albuquerque Journal  http://www.abqjournal.com/letters/new
Las Cruces Sun-News  letters@lcsun-news.com
Silver City Sun-News editor@scsun-news.com
Mother Jones   https://www.motherjones.com/contact/