Management Team Feeding Gavilan Pack
	Compliments of January 2000

By JANIS MARSTON

For The Daily Press

GLENWOOD -- Members of the Alpine, Ariz., based wolf management team are feeding the Gavilan Pack roadkill elk and deer while options concerning the wolves' future are being weighed.

"We can't trap while it's so cold," said biologist Wendy Brown, who is acting leader of the federal Wolf Recovery Program that introduced the wolves into Arizona last year. "We're trying to buy some time," she said from her U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Albuquerque.

About 20 wolves remain in the wild, with the Gavilan Pack accounting for eight of them. However, the pack killed three cattle in Arizona last fall and, after being moved away from those cattle, roamed into New Mexico, where it killed a Glenwood rancher's pregnant cow the last week of December.

Below-freezing temperatures in the mountain areas along the New Mexico-Arizona border prohibit any trapping of the wolves, said Brown, explaining how the traps don't operate as well in freezing weather as in milder weather. Plus, she said, "we could freeze off a leg of (a trapped wolf)."

In the meantime, the wolves are being regularly fed elk or deer in an effort to keep the pack together and away from cattle. She said the feedings average about 5 pounds a day for each wolf.

Wolf recovery team members met in Alpine earlier this week to discuss what to do with the Gavilan Pack. Those options include relocating the pack, returning all eight to captivity or returning some of the pack to captivity, Brown said. Wolves returned to captivity can be rereleased into the wild, she said, noting that occurred with the Pipestem Pack.

New Mexico ranchers have been writing their congressmen, opposing the reintroduction of wolves. The letter-writing campaign accelerated after the latest cattle kill.

Area ranchers say there's not enough wildlife along the New Mexico-Arizona border to support wolves. Biologists with the wolf reintroduction program disagree, pointing out the area is popular with elk and deer hunters.

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