Editorial from the Albuquerque Journal
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

New Mexico’s few remaining Mexican gray wolves are in a battle for their lives, and Gov. Bill Richardson is granting them a partial truce.

Richardson has ordered the state Department of Game and Fish to prohibit trapping for six months on the New Mexico side of a federal wolf reintroduction area. The temporary ban will allow studies on the risks traps and snares pose to wolves.

After the re-introduction effort in the Southwest began in 1998, biologists predicted there would be a self-sustaining wild population of 100 wolves by now. The latest count at the end of 2009 found just 42. 

Re-introduction has been plagued by illegal shootings and complaints from ranchers who have lost cattle to wolves and environmentalists who bemoan the federal government’s management of the program.

And traps.

In the last eight years, there have been six confirmed and three probable Mexican gray wolves trapped in New Mexico’s portion of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area. Five wolves were injured by traps, two severely enough to require amputations. Ultimately this hurts ranchers because injured wolves are more likely to prey on livestock as they won’t be able to bring down elk and deer.

The trapping ban gives wolves a reprieve while the U.S. Forest Service reviews a petition by environmental groups calling for an emergency halt to trapping and snaring in the recovery area.

The Mexican gray wolf is perilously close to extinction. If that happens, the only “lobo” cry New Mexicans will hear will be at a University of New Mexico sporting event.

READ MORE on the Albuquerque Journal website (requires subscription)

Last week, the alpha male of the San Mateo Pack in New Mexico was found dead under suspicious circumstances. Both killings are under investigation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Environmental groups are offering up to an additional $40,000 to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved with the deplorable killing of these wolves.

CLICK HERE to download the reward poster– and repost in your neighborhood or place of work.

This latest blow to the Mexican wolf reintroduction effort brings home the importance of supporting wolf conservation and public education efforts. NMWA is contributing to the cause with the launch of our Mexican Wolf Stamp program, which will raise awareness and raise funds for groups working in Mexican gray wolf conservation. Please click here to learn more about the 2011 Wolf Stamp.

In addition, the organization Lobos of the Southwest has started a letter-writing campaign in response to these latest crimes against  wild wolves. CLICK HERE TO VISIT THEIR WEBSITE and get involved.

The 2011 Wolf Stamp pictured here is not a postage stamp, but the first in an annual series of framing-quality art prints offered to collectors.

The Mexican Gray Wolf is the most endangered wolf in the world, with a total population of less than 50 in the wild in 2009.

The Mexican Gray Wolf Stamp is a conservation project created by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. The concept is similar to the Duck Stamp sold by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, except no hunting will be related to the sale of the Wolf Stamp. Instead, proceeds will be used for a Wolf Conservation Fund, administered by NMWA and distributed to organizations working for Mexican Grey Wolf recovery.

The cost is $20 (+$2 for S/H) for a 3×5 inch stamp, designed by New Mexico artist Virginia Maria Romero.

CLICK HERE to order online, or contact Trisha London for further information  at [505] 843-8696 or trisha@nmwild.org.

For more information on the artist, visit her website at http://www.artederomero.com/

by Yvonne Boudreaux, Prairie Dog Pals

The prairie dog is certainly one of the most beleaguered of all species in the modern world.  Of the 13 original species only 5 remain. Over the last 100 years, the remaining 5 species of prairie dogs have plummeted to 1%-2% of their historical range with a resulting decline of populations.  The Utah and Mexican Prairie Dogs are protected, but the fact is they number fewer than several thousand, meaning this animal is highly threatened, mostly by lack of knowledge.

Prairie dogs are important to as many as 160-170 other species of wildlife, such as burrowing owls and ferrets. Besides being a key link in the food chain they provide homes or shelter to many species. They enrich plant communities in their habitat, and help to maintain the health of arid grasslands, which means they actually help cattle, by making the grasses more fertile. In fact, the burrowing animals, like prairie dogs, open breathing tubes in the Earth.  The underground aquifers act like a lungs in human bodies. The moon as it passes raises and lowers the underground water table like tides and the earth breathes, through the many fissures and tubes they create. Nine species are considered completely dependent on prairie dogs as prey, including the Black-footed Ferret, another very endangered mammal. 

It’s unfortunate that prairie dogs are lumped within the huge taxonomic order of rodents.  They miss out on the agility of squirrels and the sexual reproductive prowess of mice. The only rodent with worse “public relations” is the rat!  But here are some facts:

• Prairie dogs are the victims of plague, not the vectors. Fleas carrying the Yersinia Pestis bacteria are brought into the colony by wild animals, roaming cats, or off-leash dogs. They have no immunity, prairie dogs die within days.
• Prairie dogs are territorial. They remain in or near their ancestral habitat.  The prairie dogs towns you see in Albuquerque are the remnants of vast prairie dog towns that go back hundreds of years.
• Prairie dog burrows are complex, with a different area for each function of life.  There are chambers for sleeping, nesting, food storage, toilets, and flood.
• Poisoning prairie dogs is not only cruel, causing a slow agonizing death that may take several days, but ineffective. While a mature colony tends to expand at approximately 2% annually, a poisoned colony can expand at an annual rate of 70%.

Something else you did not know. Prairie dogs have the most complex language of any animal ever studied.  They have over 200 words and can form sentences. Bark, snitch, yap, chirp, yip, chatter, yelp, twitter, chip, squeak, chirrup and woo hoo are all prairie dog sounds that humans can identify.  Dr. Con Slobodchicoff, a researcher at Northern Arizona University, has used state of the art equipment to parse the sounds that prairie dogs make. What he discovered was astonishing, a language that is way beyond the limited comprehension of other species. Prairie dogs possess a rich and remarkable language that may surpass the complexity of whales and dolphins. 

What was the most surprising?  As you would expect they identified intruders, but they also identified size, color, speed, direction and risk. Experiments revealed a real coyote elicits a clear and identifiable response, but a silhouette of a coyote run on a wire through the same colony elicited a different response, their word for coyote, but distinctively different. A language skill called displacement: the ability to talk about something that isn’t actually there.  When a similar experiment was conducted by running a black oval through the same prairie dog town, they created a new word. The members of the colony agree to describe and assign meaning to the unfamiliar object.  That, my friend, is productivity – one of the highest levels of language, aside from being able to “rap” extemporaneously.

Following years of controlled experiments, Dr. Slobodchicoff was also able to discern that prairie dogs are frequently separated by regional dialect. An Arizona prairie dog would sound a little different compared to a New Mexico prairie dog, and both would sound different compared to a Texas dawg,… fer shurr ya’ll.

When we hear someone mentions the jaguar (Panthera onca), the first image we get is one of the big cat moving quietly through the tropical forest in search of its prey. Although this is a correct vision of the typical habitat in which this species lives, it doesn’t show a complete image of the adaptability of the largest wild cat of the American Continent, which has adapted to other natural conditions that have very little similarity to the tropical forest.

Perhaps we can find the most dramatic example of this adaptability in the case of the northernmost population of this species that lives in Northwest Mexico in the arid mountains of the state of Sonora. Here, surrounded by a strange combination of plants, including big cacti, fig trees, palms and oaks, among others, jaguars have lived perfectly adapted since they first appeared in this continent.

Today, however, this powerful predator has disappeared from more than half of its original range and is rapidly declining in the regions in which they have survived to this day. Habitat loss, fragmentation and overhunting, have contributed to place the jaguar among the most endangered species in Mexico and in most of its entire range.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the United States-Mexico borderlands where, within one human lifetime, the unique American jaguar has been virtually eliminated from its entire U.S. range. The last resident animals were hunted in Southwest U.S. more than sixty years ago. While individual jaguars continue to be documented in the mountains of Southern Arizona and New Mexico, these are dispersers from the nearest surviving population in the northern Mexican state of Sonora near the confluence of the Aros and Yaqui Rivers, just 120 miles south of the international boundary.

This unique ecological area hosts between 70-100 jaguars, as well as numerous other rare species including ocelots (Leopardus pardalis), military macaws (Ara militaris), lilaccrowned parrots (Amazona finschi), bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), Neotropical river  tters (Lontra longicaudis) and Gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum), among others.

Jaguars are, along with mountain lions (Puma concolor), the top predators in the area and their natural prey include white tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), javalina (Tayassu pecari) and hares (Lepus callotis). Unfortunately, the main productive activity in the area, the cattle ranching, has supplied them with an additional prey: cows.

Occasional cattle killings have increased the rejection to jaguars and mountain lions and has moved some ranchers to kill them in spite of being an illegal action (jaguars are protected by law in Mexico but there is almost no law enforcement on the ground).

Within the last four years, at least 27 jaguars, including females and kittens, have been killed by ranchers and poachers – as much as one-third of this small but critical population. It would be a shame to allow the total extermination of these magnificent predators and lose this unique population, the jaguar of the desert.

Strategic efforts are underway to stem these losses, to recover jaguars throughout a significant portion of their historic range and to conserve the unique biological diversity of this threatened borderland ecosystem.

Naturalia, A.C., a Mexican conservation group, has decided to work for the preservation and recovery of the desert jaguar. To accomplish this goal, Naturalia has partnered with several American conservation groups, including the Northern Jaguar Project, Defenders of Wildlife and the Wildlands Project, to accomplish this by building local support for conservation, acquiring strategic ranches to protect jaguar habitat, minimizing predator/livestock conflicts and implementing programs which will change the local community’s perception of the jaguar from a liability to an asset.

Our long- term goal is to recover jaguars throughout a significant portion of their historic range by expanding this population in Mexico and by preserving habitat connectivity for dispersal and re-colonization into appropriate areas in the U.S. Recovering the American jaguar in the U.S. depends on protecting the last remaining population in northern Mexico.

In July 2003, Naturalia purchased a ranch in the core area used by jaguars, establishing a foothold in the community for conservation. From this area, we’ll continue our work to preserve the biodiversity of the area and look for productive alternatives for the local community. This way we hope to find a way to build a tolerant attitude toward jaguars and increase community acceptance for them and support for its conservation.

To save the desert jaguar is a challenge that offers an opportunity for bi-national collaboration and a hope to maintain the vital role of this magnificent creature in the North-American desert.

Aided by visitors, New Mexico-certified hummingbird bander Bill Talbot will weigh, measure, band, and release hummingbirds captured at a bird blind near a giant westside cottonwood.  Other festival events include a day-long roster of talks:  Ralph Chilton on butterflies; David Kilpatrick on dragonflies and damselflies; Bill Talbot on hummingbirds; Rob Yaksich on Mariposaville, the pollinator garden; and Don Parker on insects. 

Wildlife Rescue will have a live bird display, Rob Yaksich will tour the pollinator garden, and David Kilpatrick will capture, identify, and release dragonflies at the Discovery Pond.  Volunteers will lead a bird walk, offer trailside education, and invite children to explore the world of flight through arts and crafts.

For more information contact Friends of the Rio Grande Nature Center at (505) 344-7240 or email them at friends@rgnc.org.

By Stephen Capra

The big news these days is the fear of Avian flu. President Bush has earmarked billions of dollars to make sure America is protected. Though a virulent form of the flu has yet to be found in the Western Hemisphere, some Americas are already panicking. Some people are no longer willing to hang their bird feeders for fear of transmit­ting disease. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology recently issued a press release letting people know it was safe to go bird watching.

The reality is that most birds (peregrine falcons, shorebirds, ducks, tundra swans, loons, long-billed dowitchers and terns) tend to migrate over large areas and if there is one central location for this migration, it is Alaska. This makes Alaska the logical entry point for the deadly strain of avian flu known as H5N1. If you have ever spent time in Alaska, traveled to Yukon Delta Wildlife Refuge, the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge you would have witnessed the spectacle of millions of birds that come from many parts of the world converging in these mas­sive refuges. Should the flu enter Alaska via Asian migratory birds and spread amongst the breeding populations, it will then be car­ried effectively worldwide. Another potential drop-off point might well be Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge or Bosque Del Apache here in New Mexico, as birds migrate down from the north.

While the large-scale risk to humans remains theoretical, the flu has already impacted bird spe­cies. In May, a single outbreak in China killed a tenth of the world’s bar-headed geese and last month the United Nations task force iden­tified three dozen species of rare Eurasian birds at risk. Where the real problem comes in is the gov­ernment and citizens knee-jerk reaction to confuse wild birds with the poultry production birds typical to Asia, that have been the source of this outbreak. There is concern that there will be an attempt at a mass culling of species and the destruction of habitat, under the guise of protecting public health. Stay tuned.

By Stephen Capra

Perhaps no other animal better symbolizes true wilderness than Ursus arctos -the grizzly bear. From the time of Lewis and Clark, man has used muskets, rifles, roads, axes, traps, chain saws, fences and the bulldozer to tame the wilderness that was the bear’s home. For an animal that once called the Great Plains home, and was a symbol of a healthy func­tioning environment, man proved to be anything but a friend.

The grizzly population today is but a ghost of its former self, hold­ing on to small isolated islands of land in the lower 48. It is often hated by ranching interests, feared by second home owners and increasingly the darling of OLN hunting shows. However, the griz­zly is loved by many who consider nature (and a functioning environ­ment) important to the health of our land, water and communi­ties. It is a humble, mostly solitary and beautiful creature that enjoys moments of fun and delight: sliding down a snowy hillside, watching a sunset from a high peak or wres­tling with young cubs. It is also a top predator of the food web, and thus an animal that strikes primor­dial fear into other wildlife and humans.

While the recent reintroduction of the Mexican wolf has created controversy and outrage in some southwest communities, it has also been welcomed by many more who understand the importance of wolves to maintaining the bal­ance needed for a healthy environ­ment. Wolves too have added an economic incentive for rural com­munities, as many people travel to see firsthand wolves in the wild. Wolves are also helping to put balance back into environments that have seen dramatic spikes in deer and elk populations (that in turn has impacted shrubs, native species and grasses). But any talk today of grizzly reintroduction in New Mexico is generally perceived as a radical pipe dream. It was not always this way.

The last Mexican grizzly killed in Mexico was in 1960. That bear was paraded through the streets of Chihuahua amidst large and curious crowds. In the late 1970’s many people still held out hope that the Mexican grizzly, the spe­cies that once called the Gila home, was still holding on in remote parts of the Sierra Madre and the Bar­rancas (on the west slope where the Rio Yaqui flows in Mexico). The thought that a small remnant pop­ulation might exist, lead some to believe there might still be a chance to reintroduce the Mexican grizzly to New Mexico.

Reading over old letters on the subject, I was stuck by the fol­lowing quote. “I am equally interested in seeing the Gila Wil­derness restored and it would be wonder­ful if the grizzly could be put back into the ecosystem.” That letter was signed by A Starker Leopold, son of Aldo Leopold. Also, in that same time period, while not endorsing any specific proposal, both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service seemed far more open to the con­cept of grizzly reintroduction. The Forest Service even commissioned a study on the feasibility of such a reintroduction. The bottom line was that the reintroduction was not considered radical, but rather more mainstream by a large percentage of people living across the West in the seventies and early eighties.

Historically, the Mexican griz­zly was slightly smaller in stature than the Yellowstone or Alaskan brown bear. It once roamed in the Gila country and large parts of New Mexico until it was extirpated around 1921. Although the Mexican grizzly is considered to be extinct, some still hold out hope. But, realis­tically any reintroduction of grizzlies in New Mexico would require bears from Yellowstone National Park. Such action seems unlikely with the current Administration.

In one of her first acts as Inte­rior Secretary, Gail Norton chose to ignore strong local support for the reintroduction of the grizzly in the Selway-Bitteroot section of Idaho and Montana. For years, efforts had been made to put griz­zlies back on the ground. These rural communities were educated on the issue and the support was very strong even across party lines. But despite such support and the years of effort that went into the reintroduction, it was squashed by politics and one executive decision. Recently the Bush Administration has even pushed for the grizzly to be delisted from the Endangered Species Act in the Yellowstone region. By doing so the protec­tion for critical habitat would be removed and hunting of this great bear would once again begin in a limited manner. Interestingly, since the reintroduction of wolves in Yel­lowstone, populations of grizzly in the greater Yellowstone Ecosys­tem have increased to over 600 animals. Biologists believe that the wolf kills of elk and deer have left more carcasses on the ground allowing more food for the bears.

Ironically, the debate over griz­zly bears seems far more limited to the United States than the rest of the world. When we think of the grizzly ranging wild and free, images of Alaska and Yellowstone quickly come to mind. But the griz­zly has other refuges around the world and most of them in lands that have been actively grazed for perhaps thousands of years. Today small numbers of the bears can be found in the Italian Alps, Scandina­via, Siberia, Canada, Iran, the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, in parts of Western Europe and Palestine. In Asia, the Himalayan Brown Bear (U. arctos isabellinus) is found in the foothills of the Himalayas. In Japan, the Higuma or Hokkaido brown bear (U. arctos yesoensis) is found on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Such a diversity of land­scapes and human environments speaks to the bear’s ability to co-exist and thrive in many different environments. In Siberia, the bears tend to stay in the forests, while in Europe they are more commonly found in mountain woodlands, and in the US the same bears tend to stay in areas of high alpine tundra.

In 1997, as wolves were being prepared for release in the Gila, conservationists were also opening the door to grizzly reintroduction. The concept was to use the large roadless area that defines the Gila, Aldo Leopold and portions of the Blue Range Wilderness in Arizona. This, combined with the sparsely roaded areas that surround or con­nect these wild areas, creates more than 4 million acres with very low human population and tremendous habitat for grizzlies. Local ranchers led the charge against reintroduc­tion. Since they live and made their livelihood in this area, the idea of a 600-pound predator in their midst was not pleasing. So it was no surprise that the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau came out opposed to grizzly reintroduc­tion. By 1998, then Congressman Joe Skeen publicly opposed any thought of reintroduction, going so far as to have Jamie Rappaport, then Director of U.S. Fish and Wild­life, tell a U.S. House Budget hear­ing that the agency had no plans for reintroduction of the grizzly in the southwest.

Since that time, wolves have once again graced the Gila, though clearly those opposed to their rein­troduction have used bullets to try and stop their foothold in the southwest. For the grizzly such ignorance would likely be repli­cated. Reintroduction of the grizzly remains a complicated concept. Those living in the mostly rural affected communities would likely fight such an effort. And in their defense, it’s always easy to write about such concepts when you are living in an urban environment far away.

But from the standpoint of having a healthy, sustainable environment and from the position of truly loving wild country, wild lands that do not have grizzlies are frankly missing some of the spirit that makes them truly great. For generations the grizzly has been misunderstood and, as a result, mistreated. But no animal has been as revered in Native American or Western Ameri­can folklore as the grizzly. Today the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilder­ness Areas combine to protect over 760,000 acres of wilderness. But adjacent to those boundaries lies close to another one million com­pletely roadless acres.

When one looks at the Gila Coun­try, this vast beautiful stretch of land that Aldo Leopold proclaimed “the cream of creation”, it seems like a test of mans’ willingness to co-exist with wildlife and a chal­lenge to our comfort zone. It also is a litmus test of our growth and understanding of the value of wil­derness and wildlife and what these mean to the human spirit. From where I am sitting, the grizzly bear needs to come home.

I welcome your thoughts about grizzly reintroduction. Please e-mail your comments, pro or con, to me at scapra@nmwild.org

Mexican Gray Wolf Fact Sheet

Article: Can We Save The Wolf?

Wolf Population Charts – 2008

University of New Mexico Student Government Resolution

Sample Letter to the Governor

Take Action

Multimedia

Student Film on Saving the Lobo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q50M_yl52tY

Further Reading

Journal of Wildlife Management:

The Effects of Breeder Loss on Wolves

UNM Health Sciences Center:

Animal Caused Fatalities in New Mexico

Article:

Wolves, Jaguars & Polar Bears – Oh My!

Issue: Antelope Killed by New Mexico Rancher
Issue: Last Chance for the Lobo?

Jennings Law Used as a Tool to Extort Public Subsidies 

By Jeremy Vesbach

This spring, rancher Neal Trujillo used an ATV and a shotgun to chase down and kill or maim 39 pronghorn antelope on his newly acquired property near Cimarron. The local media gained access to video showing wounded animals that were left behind for the State Game and Fish Department officers to put down. The ensuing outrage spread across the state renewing calls to overturn a statute known as the Jennings Law, named after Roswell senator Tim Jennings. The Jennings Law, passed 11 years ago, allows landowners to kill game animals that they think might be about to damage their crops.

Few defended Trujillo’s actions, but his motives seemed clear from his statements to the press. He claimed the antelope were harming his livelihood as a farmer and he wasn’t getting help from the Game and Fish Department so he took matters into his own hands.

It’s a familiar refrain with the series of massive big-game kills by a handful of angry ranchers over the last decade since the Jennings Law legalized these types of incidents.  A closer look, however, reveals that incidents like this are almost never about crop damage but are instead aimed squarely at harvesting more subsidies from our state wildlife agency.

“Every time an antelope takes a bite out of my field, he’s taking money out of my pocket,” Trujillo told the Albuquerque Journal. However a quick review of the facts shows that Trujillo receives subsidies that dwarf the small amount of grazing he faced by an antelope herd.

According to State Game and Fish Department rules, Trujillo was supposed to provide an accounting of how much immediate economic loss he faced. He has never done so. Records show that Trujillo has accepted public crop subsidies of over $176,000 over the last few years. In 2007 alone, he received an additional form of subsidy through private hunting license authorizations that allow him to hold and sell scarce licenses for publicly owned antelope to the highest bidder. The estimated value of these hunting tag subsidies are over $35,000 just for the pronghorn licenses he received—and he likely made much more from 29 elk licenses on his several properties just last year. In contrast, calculations based on current grazing rates for cattle show that Trujillo was likely facing a maximum impact of between $176 to $640 during the period he was filing complaints with the State Department of Game and Fish—and the actual impact was certainly much lower because Game and Fish conservation officers were hazing the antelope herd away from his fields.

It gets even more nonsensical. Trujillo was offered economic and labor assistance from the State Game and Fish Department to improve the fence around his newly acquired fields and keep antelope out. He declined the offer of fencing assistance. The State Game and Fish Department offered to bring in licensed public hunters to reduce the antelope herd in a special hunt, where he would receive complete liability shield under state statute. He declined this offer as well.

In all, the State Game and Fish Department contacted Trujillo 24 times over a 36-day period with numerous offers of public assistance. It would be easy to conclude that he was simply being unreasonable and irrational, except for one final fact. The 11-year old Jennings Law also imposed a fee on all people who buy New Mexico hunting licenses, creating a fund to assist landowners in wildlife-proof fences and other subsidies. Trujillo wanted the Game and Fish to build and maintain a massively expensive elk-proof fence on his new property from this fund. (Keep in mind that New Mexico is a fence-out state where landowners are responsible for keeping other people’s cattle off their property.) Just asking clearly wasn’t working to get this subsidy so he tried upping the ante and crossed the line of decency in pursuing the publicly built and financed fence by starting to kill wildlife. Unfortunately, this strategy of killing big game until you get a better offer does often work.

In May 2003, ranch manager David Sanchez started shooting elk for eating grass on his property, killing 20 and threatening to kill more until the Department of Game and Fish offered to build an elk proof fence around his property and pay him $5,000.

In 2000, rancher Narcisco Baca requested nearly 10 times as many private elk licenses to sell as the Department of Game and Fish deemed to be sustainable or reasonable. He killed 64 elk, declined offers to build a fence and keep elk out of his property, but kept pushing for more permits to sell.

Currently, landowner Brad Latham near Grants, New Mexico claims he has killed over 100 elk, although the Department of Game and Fish can confirm only a fraction of the kills he has claimed. Despite Latham’s claim that he has too many elk, he has refused to allow public hunters on his property to reduce the herd. He has refused offers of public subsidies to improve his fence. Why is he refusing offers of public assistance? In statements to the Game Commission last summer he complained that he was not getting enough “unit wide” elk licenses to sell. (Unit wide licenses allow him to sell tags that are also good on public land). It may sound strange to call these massive big game killings “negotiations,” but that is exactly what they are. The subsidies that can be gained from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish are so massive and so attractive sometimes the lines of decency get crossed in pursuing them.

There are a few bad apples in every bunch and the massive kill-offs of wildlife by a few ranchers do not represent ranchers as a whole. However, it is incumbent upon ranchers as a whole to remind their peers that they all owe something back to the public after accepting public assistance in terms of reduced grazing fees on public lands, crop subsidies from the farm bill, or hunting permits to sell on the open market to non-residents at the expense of resident hunting opportunity. All these forms of assistance come at a cost to the public, and it is not unreasonable to expect a sense of responsibility towards publicly owned wildlife in return for these subsidies we provide. The most obvious way to display that sense of public responsibility is for ranchers themselves to support reform of the Jennings Law, as many already have.

To make a difference on this issue, call your legislator and ask them to reform the Jennings Law and call the State Department of Game and Fish and ask them to keep up their recent progress in making sure that the subsidies they offer landowners do not accidentally encourage wildlife conflicts.