Removing wolf protection will be lethal

Arizona Daily Sun (Original) Letter to the Editor Posted July 3, 2015 by Mack Davis

To the editor:

On June 25, Reps. Gosar and Pearce co-sponsored the "Mexican Wolf Transparency and Accountability Act" --H.R. 2910. It will ensure the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's Mexican wolf nonessential experimental population 10(j) rule has no force or effect, and for other purposes. This will undermine the wolf recovery project and the Endangered Species Act. There are only 109 Mexican gray wolves in the entire United States, making them highly endangered. I want my representative to work for the greater protection of these wolves and to oppose efforts to push them closer to extinction.

Since 2008 there have been a number of polls where registered Arizona voters overwhelmingly support the wolf recovery project, introducing more wolves into a larger area and allowing the wolves north of I-40

In Arizona wolves account for less than 1 percent of the total cattle and calf losses.

The US Fish and Wildlife service, the Department of Agriculture and nonprofit organizations all have programs to assist ranchers financially or with tools and management techniques to reduce conflicts with wolves

The Arizona Game and Fish does not seem to care about the majority of the voters in our state. The wolf gene pool is in an extremely dangerous situation. There needs to be many more wolves introduced so they are not genetically unable to be saved due to inbreeding in the packs.

MACK DAVIS

Flagstaff