Wildlife

By Mary Katerine Ray,
Rio Grande Chapter Wildlife Chair

Despite years of cross-fostering genetically valuable lobo pups from captive litters into wild wolf dens, scientists have determined that the overall genetic diversity of the wild wolf population has declined each year for the last four years.

The Mexican wolf was nearly eradicated before recovery efforts were begun. The genes of only seven wolves founded the entire Mexican wolf population alive today. It is a limited genome from which to draw, but the captive population still has 37% more genetic diversity than the wild one, which means more can be done. Cross-fostering is not enough.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service must stop removing wolves from the wild. In the last ...

It has taken almost a decade of advocacy, coalition building and meetings to produce a three-part bill that covers the oversight, mission and funding needs of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish ...

In late spring 2023, New Mexico Game and Fish opened the bear and cougar hunting rules for review as it does every 4 years. The public was invited to provide comments. But the agency only provided a document totaling 1.5 pages that encompassed statements about its proposed black bear (Ursus americanus) and cougar (Puma concolor) rule changes with no specifics about what was being proposed. A few more pages were provided in August with a little more detail about the proposals but very little about the justifications for those proposals. The public has little information about the studies NMDGF relies upon to make population determinations, and no population management objectives (other than implicit hunter satisfaction and future hunting opportunities) have ...

New Mexico’s wildlife management agency is throwing caution to the wind by ignoring sound science and the state’s worsening climate threats, as they call for unsustainable and unjustifiable levels of bear and cougar trophy hunting. Game officials have doubled down on permitting trophy hunters to kill New Mexico’s rare and iconic black bears and cougars—864 black bears and 563 cougars annually—all with the aid of radio-collared hunting hounds—for each of the next four years ...