Letters: A Green Fire Still Burns
Albuquerque Alibi V.20 No.7 | February 17 – 23, 2011

Dear Alibi,

As a supporter of Mexican wolves, I was pleased to read the article “Lawsuit Against Wolves Withdrawn” in a local paper. The same anti-wolf interests that filed this lawsuit are now working to strip our beleaguered Mexican wolves of Endangered Species Act protections. The little lobos only number 50 animals in the wild and they face extinction.

In his essay “A Monument to a Passenger Pigeon,” Aldo Leopold states, “For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun.” While perhaps true in 1947, unfortunately, now species go extinct at an alarming rate.

But to allow the extinction of the lobo is unacceptable. They are critical to their ecosystems and they are well-loved. According to one survey, seven in 10 New Mexican voters support the recovery of Mexican wolves. The extinction of the lobo is not worth a couple of cattle.

Recently, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced a bill (SB 249) that would strip endangered species protection from all gray wolves (Canis lupus). If passed, the result will spell wolf eradication—but it is especially significant to the Mexican wolf because it is so imperiled.

We need Congress to uphold the tenets of the Endangered Species Act for the benefit of all wildlife, and not to take protection away from a species for a vocal few and their big-business political allies.

To paraphrase Leopold, there will always be wolves in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. Book wolves know no urge of seasons; they feel no spring kiss of their young, no sun in summer nor wind in winter. They live forever by not living at all.

Christina Hartsock