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Update courtesy Patrick C. Valentino of the Julian Wolf Preserve
More than one gun was used to shoot four endangered Mexican gray wolves. An investigation that now involves a federal grand jury in Albuquerque and at least a dozen federal agents in the field so far has found nothing to link the shootings.
"Different caliber bullets were used," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Megan Durham in Washington, D.C. "We are not focusing on any individual as a suspect at this point," Durham added. Meanwhile, Fish and Wildlife Service special agents are following up more than 100 leads that have poured in since wolves began getting shot, the Fish and Wildlife Service said. The wolves were raised in captivity and released in March near the New Mexico-Arizona state line.
A federal grand jury in Albuquerque is gathering evidence, according to U.S. District Court documents. "We're vigorously pursuing the investigation," said Tom Bauer, an agency spokesman in Albuquerque. "We're following up on every lead. We're not going to give up until we find some likely suspects." The lack of similarities among the wolf killings appears to reduce the probability that an organized effort is behind them, according to one representative of the livestock industry. "This clearly indicates this is not a single individual, which is kind of what we thought all along," said New Mexico Cattle Growers executive secretary Caren Cowan. "It probably dispels the theory that this is a conspiracy theory or that this is sabotage. We're glad the Fish and Wildlife Service has been forthcoming with this, finally."
But an environmental activist said the number of guns used to shoot the wolves is unimportant. "I wouldn't expect it to be one gun," said Kieran Suckling, director of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity. "People are up there murdering wolves on purpose," he said. "I don't know if it's one killer or four, and I don't really care. I just want the killing to stop."
The Fish and Wildlife Service would not say how many bullets it has recovered or whether similar guns were used in any two of the shootings. Officials would say only that the same gun was not used in all four. They also refused to provide other specifics. In response to a question about what kinds of links between the shootings that investigators looked for but did not find, Durham, the agency spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., said, "We don't have dog prints at all four." She would not elaborate.
Last week, a 6.5 mm Swedish Mauser rifle and three boxes of ammunition were seized at a Reserve gun shop, and the owner of the shop told the Journal he was told by a Fish and Wildlife Service agent that he was a suspect. But on Thursday, the agency said the shop's owner, Jess Carey, is not a suspect. The agency also denied ever telling Carey he was a suspect. "We believe the ammunition might have come from his shop," Bauer said. Carey was adamant Thursday that a wildlife agent told him that he was looking forinformation at the gun shop and that Carey was also considered a suspect. "I think he was trying to scare me into giving him additional information," Carey said in a telephone interview. "I wouldn't have reacted the way I did going to you guys (reporters) if he didn't say that."
Special accommodations have been made to allow ranchers to shoot reintroduced wolves to protect livestock under certain circumstances. However, no rancher so far has shot a wolf under those provisions and there is no record yet of any livestock being killed by the wolves.
Speculation about what is behind the wolf deaths includes an organized conspiracy, a series of unrelated potshots taken by wolf reintroduction opponents or mistakes by hunters who mistook wolves for coyotes. The possibility that the shootings were a series of mistakes by hunters is "pretty plausible," according to John Phelps, a predator and fur-bearer biologist with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish.
Phelps said 33,500 coyotes are shot every year in Arizona and, of that number, roughly 500 or so are shot in the area of the wolf reintroduction. "There is not a hunter in the Southwest that has ever seen a wolf," Phelps said. "All they've ever seen is a coyote."
But Dan Brooks, the assistant chief of law enforcement for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, said such mistakes would not be innocent.
"A hunter has a responsibility of being sure of his target," Brooks said. "When I hear people say, 'I didn't know what it was,' I say, 'Well, why did you shoot it?'''