What a low-life profession: a sharpshooter who kills endangered wolves. Reminds me of the Fire Department in Fahrenheit 451 — they start fires instead of putting them out. One can only wish this sharpshooter reads Aldo Leopold’s account of killing a wolf.

“We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

“In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

—an excerpt from “Thinking Like a Mountain” (A Sand County Almanac) [from Attitudes toward wolves – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

This program is fraught with madness. Ranchers need to just suck-it-up and learn to live with predation — they’re rewarded for their loss, anyway.

Given a chance, not only will some balance be restored and an old wrong righted but ecotourism will come to New Mexico. Wake up! mjh

ABQjournal: U.S. Kills Wolf, Hunts His Mate By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

The male was killed Sunday in New Mexico by a sharpshooter on the program team. Efforts to trap or kill the female were continuing Monday, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Elizabeth Slown.

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity said, “We’re very troubled that they’re wiping out yet another pack.”

[mjh: Note this pack was located in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness last month. Tragic irony.]
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Writing.Com: Canis lupis, The Gray Wolf

In 1933 the Park Service began to see that perhaps predation was a necessary evil and they decided upon new policy, “no native predator shall be destroyed on account of its normal utilization of any other park animal [in Yellowstone]” ….