Increase comes as feds ponder rule change
After more than a decade of stagnation, the population of
Mexican Grey Wolves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to
reintroduce to the Southwest has begun to rise.
As of Friday, February 7, 2014
The
number of Mexican Grey Wolves trotting through the wilds of Arizona and
New Mexico jumped to 83 in 2013, a roughly 10 percent increase. The
rise in the population of the reintroduced wolves comes as the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) ponders a change in the ground rules
for the effort. The federal government has proposed a dramatic expansion
in the area through which the wolves can wander, including all of Rim
Country. Right now, biologists recapture wolves that wander outside a
wild stretch of territory near Alpine.
The reintroduction effort
started more than a decade ago with seven wolves born in a captive
breeding program. The program struggled for years as the captive-reared
wolves adjusted to the wild. In addition, many of the wolves were shot
or recaptured when they came too near people or cattle or wandered away
from the reintroduction area.
However, the number of wolves
in the wild has nearly doubled in the past four years, said USFWS
Southwest Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle. “I’m proud of the remarkable
progress in the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program and its partners have
achieved in bringing the Mexican wolf back from the brink of
extinction,” said Tuggle.
All 83 wolves now in the
recovery area were born in the wild, which gives them a big survival
edge over the captive-reared wolves. The apex predators rely heavily on
the help of the pack in hunting and survival. Captive-reared animals
often don’t function effectively in packs and struggle to improvise
hunting techniques they would normally learn from their wild-born
pack-mates.
USFWS biologists proposed the
expansion of the recovery area to include most of Arizona south of I-40
in part in response to the painfully slow growth in the number of wolves
in the recovery area. About half of the wolves introduced either got
killed by humans or recaptured after they either left the reintroduction
area or preyed on cattle.
An extended public comment
period on the expanded reintroduction area ended on Dec. 17. The USFWS
is now preparing an environmental impact statement on the rule change,
which should be finished in the late spring. After considering comments
on the impact statement, the USFWS will likely make a final decision on
the rule changes in January of 2015.
The most recent population
survey suggests that after a long period of stagnation, the population
may finally be expanding in the current recovery area. Arizona Game and Fish Director
Larry Voyles noted “this is the third year of a greater-than-10-percent
increase in the wolf population, a success directly related to our
science-based, on-the-ground management. Equally important to the
population growth is the fact that now 100 percent of the Mexican wolves
in Arizona and New Mexico are wild-born, which is a factor that we have
always considered an important milestone along the way to recovery.”
Biologists undertook an aerial
survey to count the wolves, especially those fitted with radio collars.
Wolves born in the wild and not wearing collars may have escaped
detection. The hours of flights counted 46 wolves in New Mexico and 37
in Arizona. The count included 17 pups born in the wild during 2013. The biologists said the 83-wolf estimate represents a minimum number, since some wolves without collars surely went undetected.
Out of the 15 known wolf
packs, at least seven produced pups last year — with five breeding pairs
tallied by the end of the year. The USFWS biologists have said
the existing recovery area doesn’t have enough distinct home ranges for
the highly territorial wolves. Wolf packs generally drive off
unattached wolves — and often won’t accept the newly reintroduced.
Biologists hope that a more spread out population will grow more quickly
and prove less vulnerable to problems like drought and wildfire.
The proposed rules would let
the wolves wander outside of the existing recovery range and could allow
the reintroduction of new wolves in places like the Hellsgate and Four
Peaks wilderness areas.
Supporters say the wolves will
help cull and control elk and deer herds, which can otherwise overgraze
riparian areas and other vulnerable habitats. Such unhunted herds can
undergo starvation-induced population crashes in hard winters and times
of drought. Studies show that wolf packs also limit coyote numbers and
benefit a host of other species.
In Yellowstone National Park,
the introduction of wolves resulted in a sharp decline in elk
populations, but a big improvement in riparian areas nibbled to the nub
by the elk. The carcasses of the elk killed by the wolves also proved a
boon to other scavengers like foxes and bald eagles.
However, critics of the
reintroduction program say the wolves will sharply reduce the success of
elk and deer hunters, who contribute significantly to the regional
economy. Moreover, the wolves will likely prey on cattle and drive out
of business the handful of ranchers remaining in the region.
Some critics also fear that
the wolves will interbreed with dogs or coyotes and perhaps lose their
fear of humans and become dangerous to humans. However, the Mexican grey
wolves in the current recovery area have never attacked humans, and
biologists monitor the wolves to remove from the wild any offspring of a
dog-wolf mating.
USFWS officials say the
environmental impact statement will document the wolves’ effect on elk
and deer populations in the past decade. The reintroduction managers have also worked to limit livestock killing by the 83 wolves in the reintroduction area.
In 2012, the USFWS with the
assistance of various private groups helping cover the costs of
reintroducing the wolves spent $100,000 on efforts to keep the wolves
from preying upon an estimated 5,500 cattle that graze in the
reintroduction area. The money went to help convert one ranch from sheep
to less vulnerable cattle. The program also helps cover the costs to
ranchers of shifting cattle grazing pastures away from areas where a
pack has established a den to raise their young, since the wolves hunt
more intensively when they’re feeding pups. The program also helps
ranchers provide supplemental feed and shift pastures and provide
fencing to protect calves, who remain the most vulnerable to the wolves.
The program each year also
pays ranchers to offset the dozen or so cases in which ranchers have
documented wolf kills of livestock — although some ranchers have
complained that the payments typically cover only a fraction of their
real costs. In some cases, biologists have
also put out carcasses of elk and deer killed by cars when a pack with
pups runs into problems — like the loss of a dominant male or female
crucial to the pack’s hunting success. The supplemental food will
hopefully keep the hungry wolves from shifting to the easier-to-kill
livestock when stressed. Finally, biologists sometimes recapture and remove wolves that have acquired a taste for livestock.
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