Update courtesy Patrick C. Valentino of the Julian Wolf Preserve

January 11, 1999

Here is a story that came across the wire regarding the ongoing battle with the American Farm Bureau-some additional information about Mexican wolves is provided below:

U.S. Wolf Lovers To Ranchers 'Give Wolves A Chance'

By Charles Abbott

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (Reuters) - Environmentalists Monday urged the largest U.S. farm group to give the endangered gray wolf a new lease on life in the West, saying despite their fearsome reputation, wolves were no threat to people and only occasionally to livestock.

      At a news conference to promote an alliance of enlightened farmers and environmentalists, Rodger Schlickeisen, president of the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife, urged the American Farm Bureau Federation to drop its lawsuit against reestablishing the wolf in Yellowstone National Park.

      Rami, a 65-pound, six-year-old gray wolf born in captivity, was at the news conference. She sniffed inquisitively at reporters, nimbly leapt onto a table to look speakers in the eye and marked the hotel meeting room as her territory by urinating on the rug.

      A federal judge ruled 13 months ago the government improperly introduced the "experimental population" of gray wolves in Yellowstone and they should be removed. The 100 or so wolves have been allowed to stay while the case is appealed.

      AFBF president Dean Kleckner has said withdrawing the lawsuit is "not an option" because ranchers don't want the wolf, a predator, near their stock.

      "There always is a possibility something will change" in a group whose members pride themselves as stewards of the land, Schlickeisen said.

      "The more we can bring this out, the more they are going to be inclined to look at these policies and whether they are rational," he told reporters. Schlickeisen challenged AFBF leaders to put the wolf issue to a vote at their convention.

      AFBF delegates vote on national policy Wednesday and Thursday, the last step in a process that began with resolutions at the local level. Although some of his group's members belong to Farm Bureau, none was an active farmer eligible to take part in policy-making, Schlickeisen said.

      While there was a court dispute over the wolf in the Yellowstone area, federal efforts to reestablish the Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest was confronted by violence. Five of 11 wolves freed in the Apache National Forest along the Arizona-New Mexico border during 1998 were shot and killed.

      Federal officials plan to release nine more wolves this month.

      Mexican gray wolves, a subspecies of the gray wolf, were common in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as Mexico, but were hunted to extinction in the late 1700s and early 1800s.