Cow Kill Spurs Concern About Wolf Program
	Compliments of December 1999

By JANIS MARSTON

For The Daily Press

GLENWOOD -- Rancher Bud Collins' gut wrenched as he tracked the trail of blood from his line camp west into Arizona where a pack of wolves first attacked his pregnant cow this weekend.

"You can just follow the trail of blood and figure out what happened," Collins said today of the first documented cattle kill by wolves in New Mexico. "They didn't kill that cow because they were hungry.

"They ran her, they chased her," Collins said. "It looks like they played with her for miles and miles."

Collins runs his cattle on the 20,000-acre Citizens Allotment on Smoothing Iron Mesa northwest of here. He described it as "some of the roughest country around" and said the Mexican gray wolf attack was no surprise. "They've been around the line camp since the first of November," he said.

The conservation group Defenders of Wildlife reimburses ranchers for cows killed by reintroduced wolves. The Albuquerque Journal reported today that Collins will receive between $600 and $1,000 for his dead cow and $300 to $500 more for her calf -- about 20 percent higher than market value.

But that doesn't replace the loss, Collins said. "That money doesn't have anything to do with the value of that cow," he said. "I expected six more cows out of her."

He said she was in her prime, around 5 or 6 years old. "The investment goes way beyond market value," he said, adding there's the personal attachment to his herd as well.

"I feel a little bit deserted by our government," the rancher said, "a little bit abandoned. There's a segment of our society (which) would rather see us not here."

The Journal quoted Michael Robinson of the Silver City office of the Center for Biological Diversity, which supports reintroducing wolves into the Southwest. "If ranchers insist wolves and cows can't coexist, we know which one should leave," Robinson was quoted as saying. "We don't see (the cow's death) as a great tragedy."

Collins called the reintroduction program ill-conceived. "There's not enough deer here to support wolves," he said of this stretch of New Mexico-Arizona border. Plus, he said, they're in direct conflict with people. "We're not against wild things, but there's got to be a better place to put these wolves."

His cows will be calving soon. "Then it'll be so easy for those wolves," Collins went on. "What can I do?"

It might mean ranchers will have to keep a closer watch on their cows, said Craig Miller, Southwestern field representative in Tucson for Defenders of Wildlife.

"A common grazing practice in this area is to disperse your livestock as much as possible, but as a result, they are much more prone to predation," he said in the Journal story.

Nearby rancher Hugh B. McKeen blames the drop in deer numbers on too many predators -- two-legged as well as four-legged -- and he calls the wolf-introduction program " a losing deal."

"You can't win," McKeen said today. His concerns are not limited to his cattle. "I'm concerned about the deer and the antelope and the bighorn sheep," McKeen said. "Who will defend the wildlife against the wolves?"

Back in the 1960s, when McKeen hunted, he said there were so many deer around here that "you couldn't count them all. They came in waves.

"Today, you've got to really look and look for any deer," he said. "You've got to get man off of them, and the other predators off of them, but, instead, we're doing just the opposite. We're putting more predators out there."

McKeen's anger was heard in his voice as he described the scene of the wolves' attack. "They jerked the calf out of her while she was still alive," he said, painting a grisly picture.

His talk turned to when it's legal to shoot a wolf. As he reads it, a rancher can shoot a wolf if it's attacking his cattle on his own property, but not if it's on public forest land. "I'm looking into those laws," he said.

Asked if he was advocating shooting wolves, McKeen responded, "I'm advocating getting them out of here and sending them back to Mexico."

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