W. R. McAfee
The Southwest is the area where Canadian and Mexican wolves mostly likely will meet and crossbreed. According to USFWS documents, the Mexican wolf’s inbreeding contributes to small litter sizes and low pup-survival rates. Cross-breeding with the non-native Canadian wolves would “solve” the Mexican wolf’s gene pool problem. Call it a “nonessential experimental Mexican wolf subspecies.” Or call it what it is—a bigger crossbred “Mexican” gray wolf.
Matt Cronin, a University of Alaska, Fairbanks and research professor of animal genetics, addressed USFWS officials at their Public Hearing Concerning Mexican Wolves in Arizona on December 3, 2013. He told the panel:
“… Mexican wolves went through a very large bottleneck. They don’t represent the original population. They came from a small Canis population. Assessing the subspecies is somewhat futile in that respect.
“… subspecies, in general, are basically a subjective category. They are not a hard scientifically blank category.
“… this phenomenon of naming species and subspecies has been termed by the broad scientific community as inflation, splitting things into groups with the intent of granting conservation, again. The entire scientific community outside of the wildlife is recognizing this. And it’s very important that we realize that subspecies as a scientific category is subjective. It’s not definitive. The scientific community agrees on it.
“ … I suggest you use the entire body of science and the recent discrediting of subspecies that have been listed and reconsider the science…”
Researchers Hedrick and Fredrickson (2010)8 wrote “ … because of non-scientific reasons, the cross-linage [Mexican] wolves were not incorporated into the reintroduced population (of Canadian gray wolves) in a timely manner and this opportunity may have been lost. If the reintroduced population does not increase soon, it may be necessary to consider extraordinary measures, such as introducing northern gray wolves, a closely related subspecies (Leonard et al. 2005), into the reintroduced Mexican wolf population.
When imported Canadian wolves were released in America, there were still native wolves in Yellowstone and Minnesota, plus regular cross-overs of Canadian wolves in states that border Canada where, in different Canadian provinces, there’s a bounty on their heads but, if they drift across to the U.S. side, they’re “endangered.”
A similar picture is developing along America’s southern border where the USFWS is coordinating with their Mexican counterparts to reintroduce captive-raised Mexican wolves into northern Mexico. When these wolves drift north onto U.S. border ranches and beyond, they will automatically become “endangered” and receive—like the Canadian wolves—a free predation pass.
Mexico’s initial reintroduction of five captive-bred Mexican wolves into the San Luis Mountains south of the Texas-New Mexico-Arizona border in October 2011 encountered some difficulties. By February 2012, four of the five released animals had been poisoned; the status of a fifth was unknown. A sixth Mexican wolf’s collar, found in April 2012, went missing. A pair of Mexican wolves released in October 2012 were still alive as of March 3, 2013, though.
Future releases in Mexico are planned for Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Sonora, Chihuahua, other states. Wolves released in these states will have cross-border access to Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.
It appears the USFWS is attempting to establish a Canada-to-Mexico “wildlife corridor” using pen-raised Mexican wolf-dog-coyote “wolves” to meet and mate with ‘pure’ Canadian wolves drifting south from the Rockies; thus furnishing America a large Heinz-57 livestock and wildlife killing machine. The fact is the Mexican wolf is not a pure wolf. It’s a crossbred/inbred gray wolf that can breed with other grays.
Today, the number of Mexican wolves and breeding pairs in the wild remain below USFWS projections of the minimum 100 wolves considered ‘necessary” for its survival. Under the 1998 reintroduction program, Mexican wolves should have reached 100 in number by 2006. By the end of 2013, the USFWS estimates only 83 collared wolves in the wild, of which 37 are in Arizona and 46 are in New Mexico; 99% of which are located in Catron County, New Mexico. Based on his investigative assessments of uncollared wolves, Carey estimates a minimum of 14 (30%) more wolves in his area, but says the number could be as high as 60. USFWS— with more than 300 ‘Mexican’ wolves in USFWS captive breeding programs—reports the number of uncollared wolves in the wild are unknown.9
Genetic material lost through coyote-dog-wolf crosses and captive inbreeding remains a major weakness of the Mexican wolf program, for which an estimated $30 million dollars has been spent over the last three decades.
Carey noted the USFWS’s Interagency Field Team is often reluctant to test for suspected wolf-dog hybrids in their DNA lab. Three Mexican wolves in his area have already bred with domestic dogs and their litters had to be destroyed.
Two recent books—both of which are thoroughly researched, documented, foot-noted, and available through Amazon—have finally laid the truth about these hardwired killers before the American public.
The first is Wolves in Russia: Anxiety Through the Ages by Will Graves10, compiled from firsthand accounts by Russian citizens, eye-witnesses, and Russian research and reports on these predators. Graves couldn’t find a publisher in the U.S. and had to go to Canada to get it printed. In it, he writes about the consequences of unchecked Russian wolves:
“The Central Administration of Hunting in Kazakhstan records that in 1986 there were 300 teams of professional wolf hunters totaling 1,104 hunters culling wolves in Kazakhstan. Notwithstanding this effort, it is reported that ‘Their combined effort was insufficient to hold back the increase in wolf numbers.’ The following year, 1987, there were 150,000 domestic livestock (mostly sheep, horses, and cattle, but including some pigs, camels, asses, etc.) in Kazakhstan lost to wolves. The year after, 1988, 200,000 domestic livestock were killed by wolves.”
Graves also documents wide ranging wolves as prolific carriers of parasites (more than 50) and diseases which they spread to wildlife, livestock, pets, and humans; including echinococci, cysticercocci, coeruni—all of which attach to humans—as well as the trichinellidae family.
Diseases spread by wolves include foot and mouth disease, anthrax, brucellosis, rabies, deer-fly-fever, taenia hydatigena, listerosis, and others.
The second book is The Real Wolf, by Ted Lyon and Will Graves11. Released in January 2014, it contains—in addition to their writings—eleven in-depth research papers (with more than 450 footnotes) documenting the damage the Canadian wolves have done, are doing, and will continue to do as they multiply exponentially and eventually crossbreed with the Mexican wolves.
Books exist and history is replete with what America was like with tens of thousands of wolves roaming the continent before it was settled.12 To not know what the end results would be once the “endangered” Canadian wolves were released and their potential for killing wildlife, livestock, and people defies credulity.
Deliberately creating such an environment for western stockmen and rural America masks either insanity or a hidden agenda.
Typical of wolf attack on cattle; six days old — note maggots.
1) Proposal to Delist Gray Wolf and Focus ESA Protection on Mexican Wolf http://fws.gov/home/wolfrecovery/
2) Wolves responsible for death of 176 sheep on Siddoway Ranch in Idaho
http://tsln.com/news/7817168–113/sheep-wolves-siddoway-idaho
3) Lopez, Barry H. (1978). Of Wolves and Men. J. M. Dent and Sons Limited. p. 18. ISBN 0–7432-4936–4.
4) Carey, Jess (2011) Comparability of Confirmed Wolf Depredations to Actual Losses: Wolves Denning in Calf/yearling Core Areas, Catron County, New Mexico, WolfReport02
5) Wolf Attacks On Humans By T. R. Mader, Research Director, Abundant Wildlife Society Of North America http://aws.vcn.com/wolf_attacks_on_humans.html
6) McNay, M. E. (2007) “A Review of Evidence and Findings Related to the Death of Kenton Carnegie on 8 November 2005 Near Points North, Saskatchewan”. Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Fairbanks, Alaska.
7) Butler, L., B. Dale, K. Beckmen, and S. Farley. 2011.Findings Related to the March 2010 Fatal Wolf Attack near Chignik Lake, Alaska. Wildlife Special Publication, ADF&G/DWC/WSP-2011–2. Palmer, Alaska.
8) Hedrick, P.W. & Fredrickson, R., 2010, Genetic rescue guidelines with examples from Mexican wolves and Florida panthers, Conservation Genetics, v. 11, p. 615.
9) The Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Program, azgfd.gov/wolf
10) Graves, Will (2007) Wolves in Russia: Anxiety Through the Ages, Detselig Enterprises (January 1, 2007)
http://amazon.com/Wolves-Russia-Anxiety-Through-Ages/dp/1550593323
11) Lyon, Ted; Graves, Will (2014) The Real Wolf: The Science, Politics, and Economics of Co-Existing with Wolves in Modern Times (January 24, 2014) http://amazon.com/The-Real-Wolf-Economics-Co-Existing/dp/159152122X
12) Corbin, Benjamin (1900), Benjamin Corbin’s Advice: The Wolf Hunter’s Guide. A first hand picture of tens of thousands of wolves running rampant in the Mountain and Western States at the turn of the last century; Internet Archive archive.org › Ebook and Texts Archive › The Library of Congress, http://archive.org/details/corbinsadviceorw00corb
