Arizona Republic (Original) Posted March 3, 2014 by the Editorial Board on azcentral.com
Our View: Don't follow in Senate's mean-spirited footsteps
Arizona's Senate passed a trio of ill-conceived measures aimed at undermining efforts to reintroduce Mexican gray wolves to our state. The House should not go along.
The argument that wolf reintroduction is a threat to livestock and big-game hunters is overwrought. Cattle ranchers lease federal land for their livestock. The American people own the land, and the public supports restoring wolves to the wild.
A compensation program pays ranchers who lose livestock to wolves, and new proposals would pay them simply for sharing their leased land with wolves. Ranchers are not being unduly burdened.
Wolves were extirpated from the wild at government expense for ranchers' convenience. Attitudes toward predators have changed, and public-land ranchers need to change with the times.
Out of deference to ranchers, reintroduction was set up to give Mexican wolves a lower level of protection under the Endangered Species Act.
SB 1211 would drop that further, even though the wolf population is growing so slowly that some say it may be doomed.
SB 1212 appropriates $250,000 from the general fund for litigation expenses if the program is expanded.
A resolution, SCR 1006, calls for shifting wolf management from federal to state control, limiting the number of wolves in the wild and locating wolves to the mountains of Mexico.
The feds will ignore it.
C'mon, lawmakers, play fair. Wolves are not the enemy. They are a part of Arizona's stunning natural heritage.
This trio of special-interest measures does a disservice to goals of species diversity that are embraced by a broad range of Arizonans.
