Arizona Daily Sun (Original) Posted on December 11, 2014 by Emery Cowan
The Mexican wolf is the rarest and most genetically distinct subspecies of all North American gray wolves. It was listed as an endangered subspecies in 1976 when just seven animals remained in the United States. The first wolves were reintroduced into the wild in 1998 and the population has since grown to an estimated 83 animals.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a final environmental impact statement on proposed regulation changes regarding Mexican wolf management last month and is going through a last comment period before finalizing the document. The new rules will eventually allow the wolves to roam throughout a much larger area of southern New Mexico and Arizona but would increase the circumstances under which the animals could be killed, relocated or returned to captivity.
They include:
- A revision to the conditions that determine when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would issue a permit to allow livestock owners to kill, harass, injure, trap or relocate any Mexican wolf that is in the act of biting, wounding or killing livestock on federal land. Current rules only allow such killing or harassment on federal land if the Mexican wolf population includes at least six breeding pairs, but the new rules will allow the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to give out those permits based on its assessment of the status of the wolf population as well as the individual case.
- Allowing domestic animal owners to kill, harass, injure, trap or relocate any Mexican wolf in the act of biting, wounding or killing domestic animals on private, state or tribal land within an experimental population area that covers much of southern Arizona and New Mexico. Previously that rule only applied when wolves were biting, wounding or killing livestock, which doesn't include dogs.
- Allowing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to issue permits allowing domestic animal (including livestock) owners to kill, harass, injure, trap or relocate any Mexican wolf on non-federal land that the agency has determined needs to be removed.
- Creating a different process to determine if Mexican wolves are affecting a state's ungulate populations and authorizing removal if that is the case. The threshold is lower for determining if a state's ungulate herds are impacted, but the state is required to go through a lengthier process to prove that wolves are the problem and that their removal would help herd numbers.
- Setting a cap of 325 wolves throughout the experimental population area, above which wolf kills could be authorized, though that would be a last resort, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials said.
