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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Ranchers in New Mexico and Arizona will not let up on their executions of Mexican Wolves--shameful it is!--Our friend Jean Ossorio providing us with this post

 


By Rene Romo
Journal Southern Bureau
          LAS CRUCES — The female wolf in a New Mexico-based pack was found dead earlier this month, and the pack's male wolf could not be located with radio telemetry equipment last week.
        The cause of death of the Morgart Pack female is unknown pending completion of a necropsy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.
        The male and female members of the Morgart Pack had been traveling together in the northeastern part of the Gila National Forest throughout September, but last week federal officials were unable to find the male.
        "That just means it wasn't located," said Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Tom Buckley.
        The death of the Morgart Pack female is the latest setback for the 12-year-old federal effort to reintroduce endangered Mexican gray wolves to a part of their traditional range in southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
        When the reintroduction program was launched in 1998, federal officials projected the wild wolf population would grow to about 100 by 2006. But federal officials counted 59 wolves at the end of 2006, and that tally has since declined to 42 at the end of 2009, with at least three wolves having been killed under suspicious circumstances since June.
        In July, an adult male wolf from the Hawks Nest Pack was found shot to death in eastern Arizona, less than a month after another male from that pack had been fatally shot. The Hawks Nest Pack's alpha female had whelped pups, and federal officials provided supplemental food to improve the chances the pups would survive after the loss of two adult male wolves.
        Those Hawks Nest cases were referred to Fish and Wildlife Service's law enforcement arm for investigation.
        In June, the alpha male of the San Mateo Pack was found slain under suspicious circumstances in southwest N.M.
        In addition, the alpha male of the Paradise Pack on the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona disappeared in mid-April.
        The Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, and several conservation groups and individuals have pledged a total reward of up to $58,000 for information leading to the conviction of anyone responsible for illegally shooting a Mexican wolf.
       

1 comment:

Jean Ossorio said...

Just to be clear about this particular lobo death--the cause is still under investigation.

Certainly, many Mexican wolves have died from illegal shooting, but vehicles, disease, other predators (e.g. mountain lions), complications of capture, and unknown causes have accounted for many others. Also, eleven Mexican wolves have been shot by project personnel for livestock depredations. We'll have to wait for results of the field investigation and necropsy to be sure what caused the death of Morgart's pack F1106.