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Editor:
I appreciate Heather Urquides' attempt to shed light on the issue of wolf reintroduction in the Southwest. However, the article ("UA graduate works to bring wolves into the environment," Oct. 2) did a poor job of conveying some of the more important points regarding Mexican wolf recovery including the following:
First, when federal agencies stepped in to provide poison and hire employees to kill wolves, they were not on the payroll "to protect cattle from the wolves." They were a part of a nationwide effort to eradicate all large predators by any means available regardless of whether or not they posed a threat to cattle or people. The programs were put in place, in part, to protect cattle interests, but that was a political move, not a means of saving domesticated livestock from vicious, hungry wolves.
Second, since 1978 there has been a federal mandate for a reintroduction program under the Endangered Species Act. The mandate has repeatedly been ignored and, when a lawsuit brought about a settlement agreement in 1993, it was violated as well. It called for a final Environment Impact Statement by March 1995 and release of captive bred Mexican wolves by July 1996. Neither of these targets have been met and a second lawsuit, filed by 30 major environmental groups, is now pending.
Defenders of wildlife are urging interested people to respect the ESA and to comply with agreements made to ensure an acceptable land and moral ethic from our leaders.
Third, the current situation with respect to livestock ranching is not as it was the turn of the century.
There are now fewer cattle on the land; we are aware of potential ways to reform livestock grazing that will protect the land from irreversible degradation and will reduce depredation on animals by wild predators.
There are wilderness and otherwise protected lands within which adequate prey and habitat for wolves exists, making the need to prey on cattle minimal. In fact, the depredation rate is less than one-half of one percent of cattle in wolf inhabited regions of the United States and verified losses to wolves that do occur are compensated by a private fund established by Defenders of Wildlife. The threat to livestock is not what people imagine it to be.
Marci Tarre
UA alumna, 1996
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