New Mexico Dems call federal government’s wolf recovery plan ‘flawed, politically driven’

By Rebecca Moss 

Several Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico say the federal government’s proposed approach to managing the recovery of the Mexican gray wolf population, which the state government has signed off on, is a “flawed, politically driven” plan that will shortchange the species and could lead to extinction. In an Aug. 29 letter to Amy Lueders, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Southwest region, the lawmakers said the draft recovery plan could be fatal for the wolves. The plan, they wrote, “is critically flawed and does not represent the best scientific and commercial data available.” The 21 Democrats opposing the wolf recovery plan include nine state senators and representatives from Albuquerque and the surrounding area, seven lawmakers from the Las Cruces area and five from the Santa Fe area: Sens. Peter Wirth, Nancy Rodriguez and Liz Stefanics, and Reps. Linda Trujillo and Matthew McQueen. The state lawmakers, in their letter to Lueders, call for numbers of the species to be raised much higher — closer to 750 wolves rather than 380, as outlined in the plan — before wolves can be removed from the wild or relocated to Mexico. And they say the range in which the wolves can be released should be expanded. The draft plan only allows releases south of Interstate 40...more