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Update courtesy Patrick C. Valentino of the Julian Wolf Preserve
Goto this site for evidence photos of #156 killed April 28, 1996. Notice where the shots are. You can download a higher resolution photo. This is a USFWS site - http://ifw2es.fws.gov/wolf/EvidencePhotos.cfm
Here is another article on the Investigation. It also includes information from the Recovery Team regarding allegations about starving animals. Keep in mind, when most people see a wolf, they think it is really skinny. Our Mexican wolves kept their summer coat later than the other gray wolves at the facility (shed the winter coat later too). The captive Mexican wolves looked thin even after eating a 90 pound deer.
Wolves, being leaner than the average dog, probably look "starving" to the average person. Dave Parson's also adds some information on the puppy that eventually died.
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The gun shop of a former sheriff of Catron County, New Mexico, has been raided for evidence in connection with the shooting deaths of endangered Mexican gray wolves, authorities have confirmed.
Jess Carey denied killing any wolves, but said he was told he is a "suspect" in the investigation by federal law enforcement agents when they searched his shop in Reserve, N.M., last week.
"We are not saying he is a suspect per se," said Hans Stuart, spokesman for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's regional office in Albuquerque. "We did serve a subpoena because he sells the kind of guns and ammunition that were used to kill the wolf found dead on Nov. 23."
A young male wolf was found dead of gunshot wounds that day on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. That was the last wolf remaining free in the wild since 11 wolves were released in the mountains of eastern Arizona last spring.
Five wolves have since been found shot to death, one is missing and presumed dead, and three were recaptured and returned to captivity. Two others were recaptured and penned with new mates and will be released again soon.
Wildlife officials are calling the last four shootings "deliberate" and an attempt to "sabotage" the recovery of the gray wolf in the Southwest. Up to $35,000 in reward money has been offered for information leading to the wolf killer or killers.
Catron County, dominated by cattle ranching, borders the area in Arizona where the wolves were released. It is an area known for strong opposition to the federal government and endangered species recovery, most recently the wolf.
Wildlife officials would not say if any of the other wolf shootings are linked to Carey or the merchandise he sells. But they apparently have recovered a bullet from the scene of the last shooting.
"Law enforcement is not releasing any details on this," Stuart said.
Three wildlife agents seized a personal rifle of Carey's, ammunition for sale in his shop and a list of several customers who have bought rifles of the type under investigation, a 6.5 mm Swedish Mauser, a military rifle often used for deer hunting.
Carey, undersheriff and sheriff of Catron County from 1981 to 1986, was given the choice either to surrender the evidence or appear before a federal grand jury today in Albuquerque investigating the shootings.
"I am a law-abiding citizen, and the fact is I am being targeted for using my First Amendment rights," Carey said in a telephone interview yesterday. He acknowledged he has been an outspoken opponent of wolf reintroduction and has written letters about it to Fish & Wildlife.
"We live in fear of losing our homes, our businesses and our children to these wolves, and the rural people in Arizona are suffering the same as we are here. But I did not shoot any of those wolves, and I don't know anybody who did. They are putting a black mark on my name. I'm now a no-good son-of-a-bitch because of this.
"But I would like to ask Mr. Bruce Babbitt (U.S. secretary of the Interior, who authorized the Mexican wolf recovery), if he will take full responsibility if a wolf kills one of our children. A wolf is a wolf - that's what they do." Carey said he asked the agents if they were in his shop to gather evidence or if he was a suspect.
"The answer was 'Both,' " Carey said. "But then the agent called me back (yesterday) morning and denied he said that. I think he overstepped his bounds, because he wasn't authorized to say it. It was law enforcement scare tactics."
Carey said he is taping his phone calls, believes his telephone is tapped and is carrying a firearm. "I'm doing that because of the seriousness of this thing," he said. "They've got 12 agents on this case round the clock. It's about like a president being shot, with all the resources and funding and agents they've got on it.
"You know, those eco-animal-rights terrorists burned down the ski resort in (Vail) Colorado for the lynx, and now I'm known for this. What will they do to me? I take it very seriously. I'm packing a firearm to protect me and my family."
Denying there is any "conspiracy" among cattle ranchers to shoot wolves, Carey repeated the theory now heard commonly from rural residents in the wolf release area - that the shootings are mistakes by hunters.
"The majority of the wolves were killed during hunting season, by city hunters who don't know the difference between a coyote and a wolf. They see what they think is a coyote, and they shoot it."
He also said the wolf reintroduction is a failure because the wolves were starving when they were roaming free and unable to survive on their own. That is the same charge leveled by the Arizona Cattleman's Association and the Arizona Beef council, in a statement released yesterday. Blasting the "lies and innuendo from radical environmentalist groups" blaming ranchers for the wolf killings, a spokeswoman for the Cattlemen's Association called the wolf program "a cruel experiment."
"These accusations (against ranchers) must have been made by someone who has not seen the wolves," said Barbara Marks, a rancher in the wolf recovery area. "It has been obvious for months they were starving. If you had a dog in the same condition as these wolves, the Humane Society would prosecute you for mistreatment and neglect."
Marks said there are local reports of wolves raiding garbage cans near towns and campsites, stealing pet food from porches, chasing pickup trucks and eating dog feces out of hunger.
She also said the single wolf pup that was born and survived in the wild this spring - but then later disappeared after its mother was shot - in fact starved to death because it was repeatedly frightened away from an elk carcass by a camera placed nearby by field biologists tracking the wolves.
Marks said she had not witnessed these incidents herself and declined to name area residents who had. She said the wolf recovery has "no support" from anyone in the area because it is a threat to their "livelihoods, children and freedom to enjoy the outdoors."
Marks did name an Albuquerque free-lance writer, Ray Nelson, as one who had seen the wolves in starving condition. Contacted yesterday, Nelson said he saw and photographed the wolves in April and again this fall while doing research for a magazine story on the reintroduction.
"The first one I saw, a female from the Hawk's Nest pack, had her summer coat, and she seemed OK to me. That was not a starving animal," Nelson said. After sighting several members of the Hawk's Nest pack in late October, Nelson described them as "in great shape."
"They were healthy, they had nice, thick winter coats, they were just in great shape. They did not look in any way as if they were hurting for food," he said.
But Nelson did say the wolves did not show enough fear of people.
"That's the really unfortunate thing - and that they're shooting them," he said.
The wolves' insufficient fear of humans has been a major concern throughout the release, said wolf recovery officials at the Albuquerque Fish & Wildlife office.
"It has certainly caused us concern, but it's improving," said David Parsons, head of the wolf recovery project. "We have had to find ways to make them more wary of humans. We've shot off pyrotechnics near them, even shot them with rubber bullets. We find that the longer they're out there, the more wary they are becoming." Parsons said reports that the wolves were starving are "absolutely not true."
"The bodies of every one the five wolves that were shot were all in very good condition," he said. "One of the (shot) females weighed more than she did when we released her."
The last two male wolves, captured and penned last month, each weighed about 80 pounds, considered above-average weight for an adult male, and also more than when they were released, Parsons said.
The female mate of the first wolf shot was thin when she was recaptured last April and was put permanently back in captivity because "she was not making it," he said.
"That was when we were supplementing their feed, and she still was not doing well, for whatever reason. It may be that the male was dominating the food," he said. "But all of the others were in very good shape. They had learned to survive in the wild without killing cattle and without conflict with humans."
One of the young females did hang around a campground and a Dumpster for some time, until the field biologists "hazed" her with tactics intended to scare her. She was then recaptured and returned to her pack in the wild. After that, she stayed in remote areas, away from humans, until she was finally shot.
There also was one report of a wolf getting into a garbage can and staying too near Alpine. That wolf was one of only two that were recaptured and returned to captivity for inappropriate behavior, Parsons said. "Only two out of 11 wolves not making it in the wild. That is an excellent record for captive-reared wolves," he said.
An Alpine resident said she saw that wolf near her home shortly after release, in May, when she had newborn colts in her field.
"She never menaced my colts. All she did was sleep off the end of our porch," Theresa Allison said. "We fired shotguns three times to scare her away, so she moved down near the willows. We named her Willow. She would spend the night there, and I heard her howl - it just makes you jump right up - and I wanted to hear her again. She was just gorgeous - she was not unhealthy, maybe lonely, I think. She seemed to want to stay near our dogs. "I loved seeing her, and I was sick when I found out they had to take her in. She hadn't hurt a thing, even being so near town."
Parsons said the surviving wolf pup was in fact spooked by a camera put near an elk kill he and his father were feeding on after his mother was shot, but did not die of starvation.
"We wanted to monitor him closely and bring him in if he was having trouble," Parsons said. "When we saw he was frightened by the camera - a good reaction - we removed it. But he did not starve to death. He was doing well until he disappeared. He died of some other cause."
Parsons said he does not know of any "credible" reports of humans killed by wolves in North America, despite the fact that 60,000 wolves roam in Canada, 8,000 in Alaska and 2,000 in northern Minnesota, where millions of people spend time in the outdoors.
Two children camping in parks in Canada were bitten by wolves in recent years, and a hunter smeared in deer scent was jumped by a wolf that took off after realizing he was not a deer, Parsons said.
"Long-term studies of wolf interactions with humans show that wolves do not pose a serious threat to human beings," he said. "The bottom line is that if wolves were intent on killing humans, they could do so easily, but all of the humans who got into these encounters walked away.
"We have heard these beliefs from people we have talked to, and all we can
do is
do the best we can to continue education about the true nature of the wolf."
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/news/stories/Story0517887.html
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The reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers of endangered Mexican gray wolves in eastern Arizona now stands at $45,000.
On Wednesday, the Grand Canyon Chapter of Sierra Club added $5,000, and last week, the author of Dances with Wolves doubled his offer to $10,000.
Five of the 13 wolves released this year have been shot to death. Two other wolves -- an adult who slipped her radio collar, and the first wolf pup born in the wilds of Arizona in a half century -- are missing and presumed dead.
Other contributors to the reward fund are: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, $10,000; Defenders of Wildlife, $10,000; Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, $5,000; and several Arizona and New Mexico environmentalists, $5,000.
Anyone with information is asked to call authorities at (602) 835-8289 or
800-352-0700.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/1203valbos.shtml
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From PCV: This is some more information passed on. I have not read it and I disagree with their blanket attacks on ranchers and local people as I find them counterproductive:
The Southwest Center for Biological Diversity released 11/22 a Mexican Gray Wolf Safe Haven Plan responding to recent attacks on Mexican gray wolves in AZ and NM. The plan chastises the US Fish and Wildlife Service failure to prosecute the killer of a gray wolf in April, saying it "sends a signal that killing wolves is not a serious crime." The plan recommends extending full wilderness protection to the recovery area, expanding the reintroduction area into other nearby wilderness areas, closing unnecessary roads, and phasing out grazing in the recovery area. See http://www.sw-center.org/.
The Plan is also posted to the WJL page at this address: http://www.jadaproductions.com