Three Mexican gray wolves to be released in Arizona today

Twenty-eight years after the last Mexican gray wolf was seen in the wild, they return today.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is releasing three of the wolves - a mated pair of adults and their female pup born in May - into a large pen in Apache National Forest near Alpine this morning, said agency spokesman Tom Bauer of Albuquerque.

Later this winter and spring, Fish and Wildlife will release eight more wolves in two other Apache forest sites, he said.

A mated pair of adults with their four May pups will be released later, as will another mated pair of adults, he said.

Each family will be kept in a large pen for at least six weeks to become acclimated to new surroundings.

This is the agency's third wolf reintroduction program - the second that releases only wolves born and raised in captivity.

The other two - of captive-bred red wolves in North Carolina and of wild Canadian northern gray wolves in Idaho and Yellowstone Park - have been successful to date, Bauer said.

The Mexican gray wolf once was abundant in much of Arizona and New Mexico, central and northern Mexico and southwestern Texas. Captive breeding efforts have brought its numbers to about 175, Bauer said.

Fish and Wildlife formed a Mexican gray wolf recovery team in 1979, said Wendy Brown, a Mexican wolf recovery biologist.

Ranchers aren't thrilled

The agency is having a reintroduction celebration with considerable fanfare this morning.

But not everyone is thrilled.

Ranchers who lease grazing land on the Apache forest in Arizona and the adjacent Gila National Forest in New Mexico, where the radio-collared wolves will be allowed to roam, fear their return.

``The community as a whole up here is against this,'' said Barbara Marks, who lives on a Blue Range ranch 22 miles south of Alpine. ``There are too many predators already - mountain lions, black bears and coyotes.''

And the wolves might well go after cattle, because their favorite prey - deer - is in decline, Marks said. ``We've had a few years of low rain up here,'' she said.

Protesting release

``But our concerns have fallen on deaf ears,'' she said. ``We're going to have a peaceful protest (today) in Alpine.''

Marks said her husband, Bill, is from a fifth-generation Greenlee County ranching family that came to the area in 1891.

Forest Service cuts have forced the family to reduce its ranching; Bill has a part-time job with the county maintaining local roads, she said.

The ranch still has 224 head of cattle that forage on the family's 255 acres of private land and 58,000 acres of leased national forest land, Marks said.

Over in adjacent Catron County, N.M., rancher Hugh McKeen also frets about the wolves' return. ``It's the worst thing that could happen to us,'' he said.

Ravaging cattle

McKeen said he's a member of a third-generation ranching family and has managed Catron County ranches for 35 years.

He helps manage the McKeen Brothers Ranch near Glenwood, which has 200 cows on private land and grazes 145 more under permit on national forest land.

McKeen said he believes the wolf reintroduction is frivolous and could eliminate deer and antelope from the area.

``City people like the romance of having wolves howl and believe it would be great for them to be wild and free,'' he said.

``But I'm upset. To me, it's going backward, and with the (money) they're spending they could do better things.''

Brown said the program has a $6.5 million price tag.

She said Fish and Wildlife has studied the two forests since 1980 and believes elk and deer numbers can sustain 100 wolves.

Larger wolves picked

And the agency chose larger wolves from among those available to increase their ability to prey on elk, he said.

In captivity and while they are in the pens, the wolves are fed elk and deer road-kill, he said.

Fish and Wildlife will release three to five family groups a year for up to five years, Bauer said.

But the agency's similar plan with the wolves in Idaho and Yellowstone Park was halted after three years because births in the wild have produced a population of 160 wolves already, he said.

Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife, said it has a $100,000 fund it uses to pay ranchers for proven livestock losses to introduced wolves.

Paying market value

Schlickeisen said the group allows the federal Animal Damage Control agency to decide if wolves are responsible for livestock kills.

``We know livestock kills will happen once in a while,'' he said. ``But in Yellowstone and Idaho after three years, it's only happened twice.''

Environmental groups are enthusiastic about restoring Mexican gray wolves to the wild, but some believe Fish and Wildlife is too generous with ranchers.

The agency classifies the wolves as ``experimental, non-essential,'' not endangered.

Thus, ranchers can kill the wolves if they are caught attacking cattle on private land, or call out federal marksmen if wolves attack cattle on public land.