2011 complaint/investigation Results:
Wolf-Animal Incidents;
confirmed wolf depredations – cattle=23, horse colt=1,
probable wolf depredations – cattle= 2
injuries wolf confirmed – cattle=5
Wolf Related Incidences=total 31
unknown cattle deaths =13; includes not found in time to investigate,
lost evidence due to advanced decomposition, scavenging by
canines etc.
confirmed bear depredations – cattle=3
shipping sickness- cattle=1
Male wolf M1049, released two weeks ago in an attempt to pair him with a lone female in AZ was removed soon after his release, residents of Nutrioso AZ complained to the FWS that the wolf was in and out of town and frequenting the community rather than honeymooning with his new girlfriend. He was removed from the area February 5.
The other release and forced pairing also failed. FWS have not said where the AF1105 former Aspen pack wolf has gone after being released near the the Morgart male she was expected to pair up with but prior to his recapture and online dating experience with F1105, the Morgart male was making forays with the larger Middle Fork pack likely in an attempt to mate naturally. See Mexican Wolf Blue Range Reintroduction Project Telemetry Flight Locations for the Week of January 24, 2011 for those of you who don’t believe it.
Middle Fork Pack (AM871, AF861)
1-24-11 Located 3.5 miles west of Cooney Point and 5 miles southeast of T Bar Ridge.
Middle Fork Pack (fp1211)
1-24-11 Located 2.5 miles north of Yellow Mountain and 5 miles west of Black Mountain.
Morgart’s Pack (M1155)
1-24-11 Located 3.5 miles west of Cooney Point and 5 miles southeast of T Bar Ridge.
So much for a great beginning to a watershed year for Mexican wolves.
January 27 the Morgart male was picked up by helicopter during year end counts, while trying to mate naturally with a wolf from the middle fork pack. He was placed into an enclosure near the AZ border on the Quemado forest service district, where he chewed his way out of the enclosure. The FWS then tailgate released a 3 year old Aspen pack female from the wolves kept at Turner pens. The Aspen pack female used in the release was removed from the Adobe ranch in Dec 2007 along with her littermates and parents, for participating in multiple yearling depredations on deeded land between the ages of 6-9 months. Attached is a link to video of this depredation. New promises have been made that these wolves will be removed if they again choose to depredate cattle. That is pretty unlikely since FWS haven’t removed depredating wolves since this video occured in 2008. Ranchers were told Governor Susanna Martinez signed off on the release.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Death of Wolf in Southwestern N.M. Appears Accidental
Associated Press
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says a Mexican gray wolf found dead in southwestern New Mexico in October probably died of an intestinal rupture.
A preliminary report says the female wolf from the Morgart pack ingested a plastic ear tag commonly used on domestic cattle and that a rupture in the small intestines likely killed the animal.
An analysis found no sign of cattle hair in the wolf’s digestive tract, and officials had no reports of wolf-related cattle depredations in the area.
Fish and Wildlife law enforcement said the wolf’s death appears to be accidental.
The agency wasn’t able to determine how the animal swallowed an ear tag.
The federal government began releasing wolves in 1998 along the Arizona-New Mexico border in an effort to establish a wild population.
Copyright ©2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
The latest dead Mexican wolf Morgart AF 1106 report is in although I haven’t seen it yet. Some kind of intestinal blockage or impaction. So it could be tumor, could be food, could be parasites, but likely the condition was brought about by dehydration and turned fatal after 3 days of being chased by a FWS helicopter.
The FWS implied in all media reports that the male she was running with could have been harmed as well but that they weren’t getting a mortality signal from him even though he hadn’t been seen.
Unfortunately for the public they weren’t told the male she was running with was a wild born uncollared male as she had left Morgart male two months prior for this bigger better male.
The insinuation was clear that someone may have killed her and may have killed the male and that the male she was with was collared.
Implications by FWS press and leadership is that illegal killings causes the majority of the problem with this program being successful.
As long as they are willing to lie to the media and allow CBD and WEG followers to put their uncorrected spin on these mortalities we are sunk.
Especially when they likely kill and trap and injure many many wolves themselves.
I am looking today to see if they will release the results to the media today. I will bet money they do not. It is in FWS and the wolf program’s best interest to continue putting a black eye on ranching.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
By Rene Romo
Journal Southern Bureau
LAS CRUCES — The female wolf in a New Mexico-based pack was found dead earlier this month, and the pack’s male wolf could not be located with radio telemetry equipment last week.
The cause of death of the Morgart Pack female is unknown pending completion of a necropsy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.
The male and female members of the Morgart Pack had been traveling together in the northeastern part of the Gila National Forest throughout September, but last week federal officials were unable to find the male.
“That just means it wasn’t located,” said Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Tom Buckley.
The death of the Morgart Pack female is the latest setback for the 12-year-old federal effort to reintroduce endangered Mexican gray wolves to a part of their traditional range in southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
When the reintroduction program was launched in 1998, federal officials projected the wild wolf population would grow to about 100 by 2006. But federal officials counted 59 wolves at the end of 2006, and that tally has since declined to 42 at the end of 2009, with at least three wolves having been killed under suspicious circumstances since June.
In July, an adult male wolf from the Hawks Nest Pack was found shot to death in eastern Arizona, less than a month after another male from that pack had been fatally shot. The Hawks Nest Pack’s alpha female had whelped pups, and federal officials provided supplemental food to improve the chances the pups would survive after the loss of two adult male wolves.
Those Hawks Nest cases were referred to Fish and Wildlife Service’s law enforcement arm for investigation.
In June, the alpha male of the San Mateo Pack was found slain under suspicious circumstances in southwest N.M.
In addition, the alpha male of the Paradise Pack on the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona disappeared in mid-April.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, and several conservation groups and individuals have pledged a total reward of up to $58,000 for information leading to the conviction of anyone responsible for illegally shooting a Mexican wolf.
Read more: ABQJOURNAL NEWS/STATE: Female Wolf Found Dead; Male Not Located http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/262326350784newsstate10-26-10.htm#ixzz14Kkjsp8B
Subscribe Now Albuquerque Journal
By SUE MAJOR HOLMES / Associated Press
Posted: 10/26/2010 04:16:37 PM MDT
ALBUQUERQUE – Another Mexican gray wolf has been found dead in southwestern New Mexico, dealing a further setback to a struggling program to reintroduce the endangered animals along the Arizona-New Mexico border.
The female wolf was found dead on Oct. 12 in Sierra County. It was the fourth wolf found dead since June.
A spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque, Tom Buckley, said the wolf’s body was sent to the agency’s forensics laboratory in Ashland, Ore., to find out what killed the animal.
The male wolf that had been traveling with her has not been spotted, but Buckley said there’s no reason to believe something happened to him.
He said there had been no mortality signal from the male wolf’s radio collar. The signal is set off when an animal does not move for a set time.
The two animals, known as Morgart’s Pack, were in the Gila National Forest in September, according to the program’s monthly update.
Government agencies began reintroducing Mexican gray wolves into the wild in the two states in 1998. Biologists had predicted a self-sustaining wild population of 100 wolves before now, but a count early this year found 42 between the two states, down from 52 the year before.
The subspecies of the gray wolf had been exterminated in the wild by the 1930s.
Fish and Wildlife officials announced earlier this month they were postponing the release of eight wolves in Arizona’s Apache National Forest until next year. The program originally expected to release the animals this fall, but managers decided it was not the right time for a successful release. The three other wolf deaths this year include two males from Hawks Nest Pack in eastern Arizona who were found shot to death this summer, and the alpha male of the San Mateo pack in New Mexico that was found dead in June from an undetermined cause.
In addition, the alpha male from the Paradise Pack in Arizona disappeared in April. Buckley said the program still doesn’t know what happened. The federal agency, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Operation Game Thief and private groups and individuals have offered a reward of up to $58,000 for information leading to the conviction of anyone responsible for shooting deaths of Mexican gray wolves.
Our Take on this issue.
We don’t know what is going on with the male, why FWS cannot find it and suspect that just isn’t true. But of course we haven’t heard anything about it since early October, but the female 1106, was likely run to death with the FWS own helicopter. Their chopper was running those wolves for days beforehand and, possibly even the day the female was found dead by the side of the road definently the day before when she likely actually died. FWS workers themselves at first speculated that she was dead from heat exhaustion.
Everyone in the area is obviously waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one even though it is highly unlikely anyone who lives in the area was even thinking about those wolves much less plotting against them as insinuated in the article. Of course the hunters were everywhere that time frame but it is the ranchers who feel the heat whenever something like this happens. NO rancher has been investigated with evidence or implicated in a Mexican wolf death to this day however, mainstream media, The Center for Biological Diversity and the USFWS are all actively behaving as if there is a reason to suspect that they are responsible for many of them. As if ranchers don’t have everything to loose if convicted of killing a wolf their entire life, home and ranching operation would be forefit. FWS never admit in media that they themselves may be the actual culprits if they did not kill it by heat exhaustion they certainly ran it up near the paved road where it could be seen by passing vehicles. It is our experience that FWS milk everything that happens to these animals for their own benefit and with Center for Biological Diversity doing press release with their own spin and FWS not saying much but allowing insinuations of ranchers involvement, is it any wonder no one cooperates with FWS them anymore.
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