Howling for wolves in Albuquerque

During “Wolf Awareness Week” you could ride a bicycle through a gigantic balloon of a red and white wolf. If you entered at the back, you emerged through the beast’s fangs, just like the UNM football team taking the field. Earnest students distributed flyers outside the UNM Student Union Building. Organizers promised to exhibit a live wolf—safely restrained, of course. You could catch film and lecture presentations on the “spirit” of the wolf. You could practice howling any time the spirit moved you. One reason for the festivities, organizers explained, was to confront the caricature of wolves in modern society. But “Wolf Awareness Week” itself came close to caricature, a burlesque of ineffectual environmental activism. It was easy money for enviros. They were guaranteed receptive audiences in the liberal heart of the Albuquerque metropolis. It was a happy frolic for anyone who likes the idea of wolves running around Southwestern New Mexico but doesn’t actually live where the wild things are. Real wolf awareness means facing the fact that reintroduction is not working. After 10 years and 15 million federal dollars—and no telling how many dollars spent by environmental groups—only about 50 wolves roam the Gila National Forest and Arizona borderlands. Wolf hatred has deepened. Steve Pearce, the area’s congressman and perhaps our next U.S. senator, has committed himself to driving wolves out of his district. By now we’ve learned support for wolves increases the farther away you get from them. Opposition builds as you approach ground zero. The wolf whoop-dee-doo took place far from the fires of the controversy. Like the nearest free-roaming wild wolf, the nearest den of wolf haters is 220 miles away in Reserve, the Catron County seat. None of the groups pamphleting the UNM campus distributed literature on the streets of that angry village during Wolf Awareness Week. They didn’t need to. The residents of Catron County are well aware of wolves. They’re walking around scared half the time. A 14-year-old boy reported being backed against a tree by a pack of wolves. Horses and dogs have been killed in front yards. Graphic, although unsubstantiated, accounts of how wolves recently hunted and ate a Canadian man have made their way to local cafés and kitchen tables....