Thursday, February 09, 2017

Protest calls for NM to allow more Mexican wolves

...The event, organized by the Center for Biological Diversity and Lobos of the Southwest, was met with a rebuttal protest from New Mexico cattle ranchers whose signs replied, “Wolves B4 people.” “It would be more feasible if we had a true recovery plan,” Jessica Decker, with the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association tells SFR, citing the same concern Sandoval and the Fish and Game commissioners gave for denying Fish and Wildlife the permits to release wolves here. Caren Cowan, executive director of the Cattle Growers’ Association, argues that ranchers aren't allowed to manage wolves and that waiting for federal management agencies to step in to capture or kill a wolf that has begun attacking livestock means waiting while more cattle die. “They need to engage the ranching community and give them the tools to be able to protect themselves,” she says. “It's not anti-wildlife or even anti-wolf. Ranchers just need to be able to take out offending wolves.” Those tools exist, counters Madeleine Carey, greater Gila guardian for WildEarth Guardians, pointing to range riders, modified pasture and electrified or flagged fences as means for ranchers to protect their cattle before depredations start. “It's just a change in the style of management,” she says. “Wolves were absent from the landscape for decades.”...more

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Common sense has also been absent from the landscape ever since the Greens arrived on the scene.