Wolf Victory…”Three Strikes Rule” Rescinded!!

Finally some good news!!  Center for Biological Diversity issued a press release announcing the feds struck down the  “three strikes rule” against Mexican gray wolves.  The victory for the wolves was a result of a settlement reached between  environmental groups and US Fish and Wildlife Services.  

By Settling a lawsuit brought by conservation organizations, the Fish and Wildlife Service reasserted its authority over a multiagency management team and scrapped a controversial wolf “control” rule that required permanently removing a wolf from the wild, either lethally or through capture, after killing three livestock in a year. Conservationists had criticized the rigid policy, known as Standard Operating Procedure 13 or SOP 13, for forcing wolves to be killed or sent to captivity regardless of an individual wolf’s genetic importance, dependent pups or the critically low numbers of wolves in the wild.

For several years, the Mexican Wolf Adaptive Management Oversight Committee, also known as AMOC, had called the shots on whether or not a wolf would stay in the wild. AMOC was organized to bring other agencies to the table, but the Fish and Wildlife Service – in an unusual move – had ceded control of the Mexican gray wolf’s reintroduction to the committee.

Thank goodness they’ve wrested the management of the wolves away from AMOC and back to the feds. Some people referred to it as AMOK…like things going AMOK….since recovery of the wolves wasn’t doing very well under their auspices.

Roaming the Gila National Forest in New Mexico is probably the most endangered wolf pack in the world, the Middle Fork Pack. Both of the alphas have three legs, each having lost a limb to leg hold traps.  This is a major victory for them and all the 52 beleaguered Mexican gray wolves  and I thank Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, New Mexico Audubon Council, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, University of New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, The Wildlands Network, Sierra Club, Southwest Environmental Center, and Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, for fighting this fight and winning for them.  Now if we can just get the dang cattle off our public lands!

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Categories posted in: Mexican gray wolf,  wolf recovery

Tags: wolf recovery, wolves or livestock