Wolf Recovery Stakeholder Group Stacked Against Wolves

August 13, 2003
PHOENIX - Today, 15 conservation organizations sent a letter to the southwest regional director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service asking him to revisit a decision to stack a newly formed recovery team for the Mexican gray wolf with livestock industry associations and other anti-wolf recovery groups and to include additional wolf recovery advocates.

The Service has invited 24 groups to submit representatives to serve on this “stakeholder subgroup” for the new recovery team. Only three of the 24 groups are conservation organizations. In contrast, seven livestock industry groups have received invitations, including the Utah Cattleman’s Association, Oklahoma Cattleman’s Association, Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and Texas Cattle Feeders Association. In addition, the anti-environmental Coalition of Arizona and New Mexico Counties for Stable Economic Growth (a non-governmental association based in Catron County, New Mexico, which is currently suing the Fish and Wildlife Service to force the removal of all wolves from New Mexico) has been invited.

This subgroup along with the technical subgroup will be responsible for writing a new recovery plan to replace the 1982 Mexican wolf recovery plan. This plan will guide all future recovery efforts for this critically endangered subspecies, including future sites for reintroduction, if any, and criteria for removing it from the list of endangered species.

“Despite our ongoing involvement in the Mexican wolf recovery effort dating back to the late 80’s and early 90’s, the Fish and Wildlife Service has instead stacked this group with anti-wolf livestock interests – the same interests that promoted the wolves’ decline,” said Sandy Bahr, conservation outreach director, Sierra Club – Grand Canyon Chapter. “We are not asking the service to stack this group with wolf supporters, but we would like to see some balance and more support for wolf recovery. Stacking this committee almost guarantees more trouble for the wolves.”

“Our group has worked year after year on the Mexican gray wolf recovery – attending hearings, stakeholder sessions, and alerting our members,” said David Hodges of Sky Island Alliance. “We are based in the Mexican wolf's historic and more recent range and yet we have not been invited to participate while the Oklahoma Cattleman’s Association – an entity that has had no involvement in the program is now considered a stakeholder.”

In the past, skewed representation in a so-called stakeholder process has resulted in the wolves losing on crucial issues of management. For example, the August 2001 four-day, invitation-only stakeholder workshop in Show Low, Arizona, which comprised the concluding aspect of the Mexican wolf reintroduction three-year review, excluded dozens of long-time advocates for Mexican wolves who had requested to participate, while including fifteen livestock industry representatives. The stakeholder workshop produced a document that in the intervening two years has successfully served to delay implementation of the recommendations of scientists who earlier that summer wrote a report urging basic reforms in Mexican wolf management.

“Recovery teams used to be largely comprised of experts in the ecology of the species – in this case the Mexican gray wolf,” said Don Hoffman of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition. “The increasing frequency in use of this type of so-called stakeholder group threatens to undercut biological considerations and to promote politics as usual.”