Groups at odds hinder wildlife conservation efforts - wolves

State and federal agencies have spent more than $20 million over 30 years to restore the Mexican gray wolf to its native habitat in eastern Arizona, an effort now teetering toward failure as the dwindling wild population struggles to survive. What has happened has exposed troubling weaknesses in the wildlife conservation system. Politics, competing interests and drawn-out lawsuits hinder on-the-ground work to protect the species, while three groups that should work together - state regulators, the federal government and environmental organizations - are too often at odds. Emotions have magnified the conflicts over the wolf's return, but most of the arguments surface repeatedly in other cases. Wildlife agencies say courts, ruling on suits filed by environmental groups, increasingly trump science in management decisions. Environmental groups accuse the agencies of dragging their feet and favoring hunters and ranchers over native species...But ranchers resisted, arguing that wolves kill their livestock. They lobbied Congress and their state lawmakers and sued the federal government. The result, environmental groups say, is a program that was designed to fail. First, the government decided to release wolves under rules that give agencies more leeway to remove or kill a wolf if it is caught preying on livestock. Such latitude is unusual in an endangered-species case. Then, the federal agency limited the wolf packs to territory in Arizona after New Mexico gave in to protests by ranchers and refused to allow wolves in the wild. The wolves are the only endangered species limited by political boundaries, said Michael Robinson, who works on wolf issues for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity...more