Conservationists Take Aim At Flawed New Rule On Mexican Gray Wolf Management | WPN World People News

Conservationists say they’ll fight provisions in a new federal rule that caps the population of endangered Mexican gray wolves in the Southwest at numbers too low for recovery, bans them from needed recovery habitat, and makes it easier for them to be killed. While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new rule allows wolves in an expanded area, the other provisions will impede the long-term recovery of these rare animals.

A Mexican gray wolf. While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's new rule allows wolves in an expanded area, the other provisions will impede the long-term recovery of these rare animals.

The Service also announced Monday that it will protect the Mexican wolf under the Endangered Species Act as a subspecies separate from other wolves, which will provide Mexican wolves the right to a long-delayed recovery plan. Both new rules stemmed from petitions and lawsuits filed by the Center for Biological Diversity.

“The Mexican gray wolf recovery program has been hamstrung from the start, and this new management rule doesn't go nearly far enough to fix the problem,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Capping the population and keeping them out of the Grand Canyon and northern New Mexico will keep the lobo on the brink of extinction.”

“The Fish & Wildlife Service’s new rule offers some useful reforms, but it ultimately overwhelms them with harmful ‘poison-pill’ provisions that conflict with prevailing scientific recommendations and that will make it impossible to recover this extremely rare and embattled species,” said Heidi McIntosh, Earthjustice managing attorney. “The Mexican wolf’s climb back from the brink of extinction is hard enough without placing new obstacles in their way.”

As documented in a recently issued report, blocking the wolves at Interstate 40 runs directly counter to the recommendations of the Service’s own recovery team and the best available science. That recovery team determined that additional Mexican wolf populations should be established in the Grand Canyon ecosystem and in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado to help increase wolf numbers to at least 750 animals.

The new rule also gives the Service great latitude to issue permits to private individuals and government agents to kill wolves without any safeguards to guarantee that such killing will not remove genetically essential individuals from the Mexican wolf population, which is already under threat of genetic inbreeding.

“Allowing Mexican gray wolves to disperse over a broader area is a positive, but that positive is negated by an unfounded population cap and increased authorized killing—neither of which is based in the science that says what’s best for lobos,” said Eva Sargent of Defenders of Wildlife. “The rule is a classic ‘one step forward, one or two steps back’ and will ultimately hinder the recovery of these iconic and imperiled wolves.”

Source: Earthjustice