Wolf Crossing

The following photographs and article detail what happened and didn’t happen on the Adobe ranch Summer of 2007 relating to a series of incidents that resulted in the lethal control of AF 924 of the Durango Pack.  This series of events so infuriated Environmental extremists that they orchestrated a smear campaign against this ranch, it’s individual employees, it’s manager as well as it’s owner.  It all began with the following cow calf kill. 

Strike 3 and 4 a cow and calf pair,  caused implementation of SOP 13 for the alpha female of the Durango pack and strike one for her mate. 

Why were the wolves on the ranch?  FWS knowingly and willingly released the wolf AF 924 with 2 strikes into an area where she was familiar with the landscape and had killed livestock in the past six months.  They did this with the full knowledge that she was pregnant and had one strike (livestock kill incident) to go before lethal removal was authorized.  They did this knowing that she would teach her mate and then her pups to kill livestock.  They did this knowing that female wolves with pups are far more likely to kill cattle than any other wolves and this wolf already had a record. 

Durango pack adults hanging around Adobe ranch 6-22-07

FWS allowed these behaviors to continue knowing that prior to her last removal from the “wild”, the wolf had frequented the nearby ranch house harassing the people that lived in it several dozen times, one of the reasons she was removed.  Knowing that she was already a confirmed livestock killer having killed a grown cow on her own at approximately nine months of age.

They also allowed the wolves to den within a half mile of branding pens located on deeded land and within 5 miles of a home in the same series of canyons.  The agency also authorized feeding the Durango wolves near these locations throughout the summer of 2007 literally baiting them to remain in a bad area where they harassed livestock and people.  The FWS allowed the wolves to roam among the cattle that were present the pastures before the wolves moved in. 

Both the Adobe and Slash ranches are over 100 years old and cattle have been run in those pastures every spring for over 120 years and branded in the same corrals all of those years. Both ranches unlike their neighbors are very large and with so much work to be done during branding season,  ranch management was not changed and work went on as it has for over 120 years.  On the other side of the coin, the only management changes FWS and other agency personnel made to manage the wolves was to feed them and sleep in trucks near the ranch home in unsuccessful attempts to “haze” the wolves away from the home.   At one point when Catron county authorized setting havahart traps on deeded land for AF 924, FWS sent in Special law Enforcement Agents to babysit the wolves and make sure nobody harmed them.  

 

USFWS Special Law Enforcement watching livestock producers brand calves two days before strike three was found and possibly the very day it took place.  6-26-07 Apparently the agents were not aware that baiting of wolves was occuring in those branding pens, right before their very eyes. If they did they never arrested anyone or reported it to superiors. 

Branding Tims Tank corrals 6-21-07.  This photo was taken the very day at the very corrals HCN reporter John Dougherty claimed Mike Miller ranch employee admitted to ”baiting” wolves.  So we can assume one of the men in the photo is Mike Miller and he is in the act of “baiting” wolves. 

Lunch time at Tims Tank pens, date and site of alleged baiting incident and media free for all, that inspired changes to SOP 13

No evidence whatsoever of baiting wolves, sacrificing livestock to wolves or tempting a wolf with a hot dog was ever found.   The only deliberate attraction that occurred that summer was approved feeding of wolves within a mile of this branding.  This set of pens is on deeded land as are all the pens located on the map linked in this article. 

As the result of a September interview conducted months after the lethal removal of AF 924 for her third and fourth known livestock kills, reporter John Dougherty from the High Country News, reported ranch hand Mike Miller casually admitted to the reporter that he baited the wolf to kill the cow so that lethal control could take place.  Mike Miller has denied making that statement to John Dougherty.

According to Mr. Dougherty’s own goodbye piece for the Phoenix New Times he has honed the art of attack journalism.  
“I soon honed the art of attack journalism.  Rather than sitting back and waiting for “newsmakers” to hold “press conferences” to spin their views, I dug into the underbelly of the beast. I loudly demanded information, often through the Arizona Public Records Law, which is vital to journalists providing the public with a better understanding of why their community is what it is.The kind of journalism I practiced at New Times is not for the weak-hearted who want approval from the powerful and wealthy, or who want to be invited to lunch with the governor and to power brokers’ fancy parties. Attack journalism inevitably leads to confrontation with powerful interests. That is why the in-your-face, irreverent, counterintuitive, f***-’em-all attitude at New Times was the place for a guy like me.”John Dougherty was for 13 years a reporter at the Phoenix New Times News. His last piece for PNTN (Vaya Con Dios, published on August 31, 2006) is autobiographical. The complete article can be read here http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2006-08-31/news/vaya-con-dios/1

This alleged baiting incident reported by High Country News, was supposed to have taken place 6-21-07 the cow and calf were killed around 6-24 to 6-26 the same day USFWS Special agents showed up at the ranch to protect the wolves and were photographed watching a different branding well south of the kill site.  Neither the 6-21 branding nor the 6-26 branding took place near the third and fourth cow calf kill that led to the lethal removal of AF 924.   

The High Country News article, Last chance for the Lobo,  is found at the following link.

http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=17419  (read at your own risk it is an ugly piece of ‘attack journalism’ and bears no evidence to back the claims it makes. Dourgherty opens the article by commenting repeatedly on Mrs. Millers physical  appearance. She is a redhead by the way, not a brunette, much less a hardy brunette. )

Initiation of the HCN article was likely due to a series of frantic bitter press releases authored by an employee of the Center for Biological Diversity.  A May 07 release, makes the claim that the Adobe and Slash ranches have dead and dying livestock littering the landscape and that severe overgrazing is a reason for wolf control that had been occurring on the ranch.  Another claim that offers no evidence whatsoever as support.  The same press release contains an invitation to the media to see the dead cattle and overgrazing that were simply not present or occurring. The Slash and Adobe ranch was not overgrazed nor were dead and dying cattle present anywhere on the ranch.  Unless the victim was killed by a wolf or wolves.

Well established but still dormant grass on Adobe ranch June 5 2007 one month after CBD press release claiming severe overgrazing. 

Another photograph ten miles southeast of top photo shows healthy vibrant and still dormant grasslands from the prior year, taken June of 07

Yet another photo of the Adobe Slash ranches taken in October of 07 during and after seasonal use of cattle showing yet more vibrant healthy grasslands. 

When the HCN reporter John Dougherty, came to the Adobe and Slash ranch hunting a story he very likely expected to find dead cattle and severely overgrazed range.  When he did not, he had no story other than the severely re-hashed version of events surrounding the lethal take of AF 924 that was already old news.  There was no point in yet another story about a ridiculous and unfounded claim a disturbed wolf volunteer made the day of the lethal removal of the wolf, that Wildlife Services personnel pointed a rifle at her.  Wildlife services personnel were cleared of those charges and the woman moved almost immediately after making them. 

However, the entire incident was the source for yet another press release by the Center for Biological Diversity among other extreme wolf advocates. 

Due to the HCN article and the hyperbole surrounding it and hysteria of wolf activists, actual policy changes are being pursued by wolf managers.  Due to the article, the Adobe and Slash ranches are no longer being compensated for wolf kills by Defenders of Wildlife.  However, their compensation was limited and sometimes a year behind prior to attacks against the ranch so it was clear DOW no longer wanted to compensate certain people who were vocal about the programs failings and were also having wolf control on their ranch. 

Not once has anyone ever thought that perhaps the reason so many wolves move so far out of the wilderness and are attracted to the Adobe and Slash Ranches is that stewardship of the land is creating the perfect habitat for them. Habitat that doesn’t exist in the wilderness where the wolves are supposed to stay.   

Due to the extreme pressure by wolf advocates, their P.R. firms, their well funded contingent of attorneys, and amazingly Governor Richardson’s office, AMOC the adaptive management oversight committee in charge of the Mexican wolf program has agreed to review Standard operating procedures for management of problem wolves SOP 13  as well as changes to procedures that are used to confirm a wolf kill SOP 11.  Why? It appears they all think too many wolves are being confirmed as livestock killers and it has to be someones fault.  Cow kills are simply too high and must be manipulated on paper to show less than the real number.   

This is no surprise to ranchers in the area, SOP 13 has consistently allowed far more than the confirm-able 3 head of livestock.  Nothing happens to any wolf or wolves until more than three head of what end up being mostly adult cattle are found in time to examine and confirm as wolf depredation.  Normally the finding is a chore left almost entirely to the rancher who has many other jobs as well, Confirming has been left solely to Wildlife Services although that will likely change in the near future as well.   

Normally adult cattle are the only livestock large enough to be confirmed, but due to  enormous losses in baby calves that occur when Mexican wolves are in an area that remain un-confirmable by FWS standards, ranchers in the area are going out of business.   The leniency of SOP 13 that allows multiple kills, mass unconfirmed killing of baby calves and continued habituation to livestock and human habitation before any action is taken to manage wolves.  Still, the wolf advocates are not happy.   

Ranchers know we will never satisfy wolf advocates, Never.  Especially those that are willing to fabricate incidents and work up their own evidence to get support for legal action aimed at removing livestock producers from the land. 

Meanwhile with very little recourse, ranchers and rural homeowners in the reintroduction area continue to struggle for equitable treatment within the hierarchy of the Mexican wolf program.  We continue to seek oversight on program management that discriminates against our neighbors and family’s, and we continue to be amazed that this oversight is not forthcoming.  And we are continually accused of being politically motivated. 

Last week, Dave Parsons writer of the infamous Mexican wolf management rule that we now live under that has so failed this program and all the people surrounding it, was called in to testify before a congressional oversight hearing on behalf of the Mexican Wolf and he did so by claiming ranchers use political pressure to manipulate the program into its current failures. 

Moral of the story, if you have your own private law firm, if you have your own P.R. machine, if you have a lot of contributions coming in from housewives who don’t get access to the truth, or wealthy philanthropists or government grants, you can manipulate and fabricate what is actually happening into a myth so large you may be successful in implementing almost any harmful and unnecessary policy changes or baseless investigations you want.  You just have to tell one big hairy lie often enough that somehow it becomes public policy. 

Moral of the story, there was no baiting, has never been baiting of wolves and never will be baiting of wolves.  It is impossible to convince a cow to just let a wolf kill her calf, she generally gets on the fight and gets herself killed as a consequence. 

Certain advocacy group and some reporters fabricate stories to suit their constituencies and readers and their own ideaism. 

The reak question is, since FWS and AMOC know there was never any baiting of wolves because of the investigation and law enforcement personnel at the scene at the time of the alleged incident.  So why is this still a controversial issue deserving of a change in procedure?