Wolf Issue Laid Out At Citizens Meeting
	From the January 2000

A lot of ground was covered Tuesday night at a meeting between Mexican gray wolf reintroduction personnel and area residents.

The meeting, held in the county extension office in Silver City, was organized by the Gila Fish and Gun Club, Grant County Cattle Growers and People for the U.S.A. Representatives of the wolf reintroduction effort included Wendy Brown, coordinator of the Mexican gray wolf program; Alan Armistead of Wildlife Services; Val Asher, a biologist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department; Colleen Buchanan of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and Nick Smith, a biologist with the New Mexico Game and Fish.

The meeting was started with Brub Stone, president of the Gila Fish and Gun Club, saying that club members perceive a lack of communication from the USFWS on the wolf reintroduction effort; don't know what their rights are in relation to the wolf; and question where the reintroduction effort is going.

Those questions gave Brown a starting point. She explained that the USFWS maintains a mailing list of people interested in the wolf reintroduction and sends bi-weekly updates of "everything, the good, bad and the ugly in terms of what's happening out there."

Anyone can request to be put on the mailing list, she said. The USFWS also maintains a reporting hotline for anyone who sights a wolf in an inappropriate area -- (888) 459-9653.

"The most recent communication was the scoping letter," Brown said, which was sent to interested parties last week. That letter included a history of the reintroduction program, and explained that written public input on translocation of wolves into the Gila Wilderness will accepted until Feb. 4. The input will be reviewed and used to form an Environmental Assessment, which the public will have 30 days to review. During that period, there will be two public meetings: one in Reserve on March 1 and one in Silver City on March 2.

Brown also said, "We will use this meeting, since you called it, in terms of scoping."

Translocation of wolves into the Gila, Brown explained, is one of the USFWS's options in management of the reintroduced wolf population. All wolves introduced in the program, she said, are captive-raised wolves that "do dumb stuff" and "don't know which end is up" when they are first released. The key to the wolves' success in the wild, she said, is experience. "The two best wolves we have were released in 1998 and have had a lot of time to figure things out."

Of supplemental feeding of the wolves, Brown said, "We don't have a choice. ... Our job as the people trying to implement the program is to make those animals as successful as we can. ... This year we said our objective is to try and get wolves that have been born in the wild to survive in the wild long enough to become wild animals ... so we supplementally fed pretty intensively this year." As the pups mature and the pack can begin hunting together, she said, wolves are weaned from the supplemental feed.

Under the current rules, wolves are introduced into the Arizona portion of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area. But wolves have had run-ins with livestock, which has led to the return to captivity of the Pipestem Pack and the current trapping effort of the Gavilan Pack. Three other small packs still remain in the wild in Arizona, Asher said. She called two of these "model packs," saying one has not been fed for a year and another has not been fed since the end of the summer. "We have had visuals on them and they look good," Asher said.

The wolves being returned to captivity are candidates for translocation to the Gila. Armistead said the alpha male, female and two pups of the Gavilan Pack have now been trapped. The alpha male will never be returned to the wild, Brown said.

Brown said the "recovery objective" of the Blue Range area is to have about 100 wolves, more or less depending on what the habitat will support. "The wolves will determine that," she said.

Audience members asked about the cost of the program. In the last two years, Brown said, $1.2 million has been allocated to the wolf recovery effort. The timeline for the program was planned for 15 years, with the total cost projected to be about $7-7.5 million.

Brown said it has not been determined how many wolves might be translocated into the Gila, of even if the four suggested wolf translocation areas in the Gila will be used. "It isn't predetermined that all of them (areas) would be used -- in fact it's not predetermined that any of them would be used." The scoping process is intended to determine whether areas in the Gila are appropriate for wolf translocation, she said.

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