{"id":21560,"date":"2025-07-03T20:53:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T20:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/proposal-to-remove-protections-for-mexican-gray-wolves-could-lead-to-extinction-advocates-say\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:07:22","slug":"proposal-to-remove-protections-for-mexican-gray-wolves-could-lead-to-extinction-advocates-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/proposal-to-remove-protections-for-mexican-gray-wolves-could-lead-to-extinction-advocates-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposal to remove protections for Mexican gray wolves could lead to extinction, advocates say"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A Mexican wolf stares forward while standing in a field of grass. Courtesy New Mexico Department of Game and Fish<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A bill introduced Monday, proposing to strip endangered species protections from Mexican gray wolves would mean \u201cunrecoverable losses\u201d for the Southwestern wolves, wildlife advocates said.<\/p>\n

Arizona Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar\u2019s bill, \u201cEnhancing Safety for Animals Act,\u201d would remove the wolf from the federal list of endangered species and end U.S. population restoration efforts in Mexico. Gosar\u2019s office issued a news release saying \u201csignificant attacks by wolves on cattle, elk, moose, and sheep have occurred and have negatively impacted hunters and ranchers throughout Arizona.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delisting would also end federal investigation into wolf predation on livestock and reduce federal funding for livestock losses, Michelle Lute, executive director for Wildlife for All, told Source NM, and would further erode recovery programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cStripping federal protections for Mexican gray wolves would invite another extinction,\u201d Lute said. \u201cThis is not alarmist, this is what we\u2019re already seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mexican gray wolves once lived throughout the mountains and deserts of New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico, but were driven to near-extinction by the 1970s due to years of eradication to keep them from preying on cattle.<\/p>\n

Two years after the passage of the Endangered Species Act, U.S. Fish and Wildlife added the Mexican gray wolf to the list, garnering federal protections. Officials captured the seven remaining wild wolves, and bred them back from extinction. Federal wildlife officials reintroduced the wolves in Arizona and New Mexico in 1998. Today, the national wild population is 286 animals. Reintroduction in Mexico occurred in 2011.<\/p>\n

Tensions over the wolf introduction program have escalated in New Mexico, culminating in Catron and Sierra county boards issuing disaster declarations in resolutions earlier this year and asking state officials to step in, end federal wolf releases into the wild and kill wolves that prey on livestock.<\/p>\n

Federal delisting would remove federal prohibitions on killing wolves, said Michael Robinson, senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.<\/p>\n

\u201cBypassing the Endangered Species Act to strip all protections from beleaguered Mexican gray wolves and leave them vulnerable to Arizona\u2019s shoot-on-sight laws would cause a massacre,\u201d Robinson said in a statement. \u201cThe Southwest\u2019s ecology would suffer, and we\u2019d be left with a sadder, drabber landscape if Gosar and the livestock industry\u2019s cruel vision for wolf extermination becomes law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source NM is an independent, nonprofit news organization that shines a light on governments, policies and public officials.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arizona Rep. says wolves \u2018have negatively impacted hunters and ranchers\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[896,28,138,29,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico","tag-newsletter","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77361,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21560\/revisions\/77361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21560"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}