Specialist: Wolves Weren't Very Wild
	Compliments of December 1999

By JANIS MARSTON

GLENWOOD -- With deer in the area between the New Mexico-Arizona state line, the six Mexican gray wolves killed a cow.

As disturbing as this is for area ranchers, the man who found the first confirmed wolf kill in New Mexico said he's more concerned that the wolves didn't run as soon as they saw him.

"They weren't as wild as I'd like to see them," said Ed Holloway, a range management specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. "They didn't seem afraid of people," he said.

Holloway and Deputy Sheriff Ray Goetz were driving back to Glenwood Sunday afternoon after an unsuccessful day of bow hunting for deer in Arizona when they saw the pack of wolves. The two were approaching some corrals on Smoothing Iron Mesa about 15 miles northwest of Glenwood. The allotment is adjacent to one of the wolf release sites in Arizona.

Holloway first saw a wolf standing in the road, by the corrals. "He was looking at the horses. Then he looked at my truck. 'Whoa! That's a wolf,' I said." Then he saw a second wolf, lying down nearby.

"We watched them for 15 minutes," Holloway said. Two of the six wore radio collars. One was yellow, one was red. The wolf in the road was uncollared. "They looked healthy to me," he said. "Their fur is in the prime."

Holloway said he suspected the wolves had attacked something by the way they ran. "They were magnificent running off," he said, "but they kept looking back, over their shoulders, like a coyote does when it doesn't want to leave a kill behind."

The two men found the cow lying by the corral gate. It was a fresh kill, he said, describing how the wolves had eaten out areas beneath the tail and around her udder. Other cows were nearby, in a small holding pasture on the other side of the corral, he said.

"What worried me more than anything is that the wolves were going right down there into the cow camp," Holloway said, "where there's pickups and trailers and new construction, and all sorts of activity."

Holloway said he returned to the Smoothing Iron area Tuesday morning and saw "a big herd of deer right there." Pausing a moment, he said, "this can't be good for the wolf-release program."

This is the second year of the federal program to reintroduce wolves into the wilderness. About 20 wolves remain in the wilds of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials want to relocate some of them into the Gila National Forest.

Catron County's commissioners recently passed a resolution opposing the relocation of wolves into the county. A pack of wolves that killed some domestic animals in Arizona has been targeted for re-release into the Gila Forest as soon as February.

Wildlife biologists have estimated that wolves would kill 34 cows a year once the wolf population reaches 100.