Five wolves have been shot to death in what U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials believe is a systematic effort to undermine a program designed to revive the Mexican gray wolf population. In this latest drama pitting man against wolf, environmentalists suspect area ranchers who oppose the reintroduction effort. Ranchers blame hunters from Tucson and Phoenix. But they're also taking the opportunity to demand that the federal government halt what they believe is an ill-conceived attempt to force the wolves on agricultural interests in Arizona and New Mexico. The tensions surrounding the program symbolize the clash between science and local values that has met many attempts to reestablish endangered species in the wild.
Federal authorities have no intention of backing off.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt recently reiterated that the wolves are here to stay, and the Fish and Wildlife Service plans to release an additional 10 to 15 wolves between December and March. The goal is to have at least 100 of them eventually living in the Apache and Gila national forests along the Arizona-New Mexico state line. Wolves have been all but gone from the Southwest since the 1950s, hunted by the federal government and by ranchers who saw them as a threat to livestock. The last Mexican gray wolf seen in the wild was shot to death near Alpine, Texas, in 1970. Biologists consider this to be the most critical wolf-recovery project so far because El Lobo is the most genetically unique and most endangered subspecies of gray wolf in North America.