Give Ted Turner the Job of Reintroducing Wolves to the Wilds

Led by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials recently released captive-bred Mexican wolves at three sites in the Apache National Forest near the Arizona-New Mexico border. Their goal is a viable population of 100 wolves within a 5,000-square-mile area. The program’s target date is 2005, and its estimated cost is $7.2 million. The wolves’ release occurred within the animal’s historic range, which encompassed most of today’s borderlands between New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora and Chihuahua. The Mexican wolf is the most endangered subspecies of the gray wolf. Only 176 are known to exist, all in captivity.

You can find this information at the Fish & Wildlife website. You won’t find any real wolves there, and you may not find any this spring if you head for the Apache National Forest. Why?

Environmentalists, represented by the Sierra Club, and ranchers, represented by the Mountain States Legal Foundation, don’t like Fish & Wildlife’s plans. They recently “won” a similar case in Wyoming, when a judge agreed with them that the successful wolf-reintroduction program there “endangers” “natural” wolves that have moved from Canada into U.S. reintroduction sites.

In Arizona, rancher Jupe Means, 81, told this newspaper that, “Putting wolves back [in Apache] is just like legalizing bank robbery.” He offered to contribute $5,000 toward a lawsuit to have the wolves ejected. Rather than dismiss Means as a colorful fool, moderates who really care about the Mexican wolf’s future should listen carefully to him.

When Means points to the Wyoming case, we should ask: How does that ruling affect the Mexican wolf program? One murky issue has finally clarified. For 10 years, I’ve urged landowners, agencies and conservation groups along the U.S.-Mexico border to manage suitable habitats along historic wolf-migration corridors to facilitate border crossings. The stonewall the wolves and I ran into never made sense until the Wyoming ruling. What some fear most is a “natural” wolf. For if “natural” wolves cross the border into places like southwest New Mexico’s Gray Ranch, then the Mexican wolf’s enemies will bring suit to exterminate the reintroduced population, just as they did in Wyoming.

Naturally, the extremist lawyers from both sides are unwilling to tip their hands. The returning Mexican wolves are fenced in, as it were, but as soon as the first one goes truly wild, a milagro will occur: a “natural” wolf will miraculously appear on the U.S.-Mexico border. The Sierra Club’s Earthjustice Fund and the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation will file Wyoming-like suits.

And the $7.2-million Mexican wolf program will slink back into its cage. There may or may not be “natural” wolves in Mexico. The recent miraculous appearance of a wild jaguar on the U.S. side of the border suggests a predator-prey-habitat combination that would mean good news for wolf lovers. But if the elusive jaguar can suddenly appear, then the wolves--and the lawsuits--cannot be far behind.

Surely, there is a saner, more efficient, less expensive way to achieve what most Americans want: healthy populations of wild wolves. In his typical style, Ted Turner has turned the issue on its head. In times past, the idea of private landowners welcoming wolves raised a howl. But Turner is the largest private landowner in New Mexico, including huge ranches southwest of Albuquerque that are appropriate wolf habitat. He announced recently that he would breed Fish & Wildlife-approved Mexican wolves there for reintroduction on public lands. Turner hired one of America’s best wildlife biologists, Mike Philips, to oversee his program to restore endangered species on all of his properties. Furthermore, Turner has hired Steve Dobrott to manage his 260,000-acre Ladder Ranch.

Philips supervised the successful reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone and red wolves to North Carolina. Dobrott worked on plans to reintroduce wolves to the Gray Ranch. Now add wolf biologist Matt Hartsough, who worked at Yellowstone National Park. These guys know what they are doing. Turner’s penned wolves will salivate at his herd of bison. Are the neighbors happy? No. Does Turner care? Probably not.

Turner’s tool is the Turner Endangered Species Fund, managed by his son, Beau, who is planning to restore species throughout the family empire: holdings in New Mexico (desert bighorns, black-footed ferrets, California condor, blacktailed prairie dog), Montana, South Carolina, Florida (red-cockaded woodpecker) and Nebraska (blowout penstemon).

Turner “just did it” again recently when he bought the 578,000-acre Vermejo Park Ranch in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the Colorado-New Mexico border. He has already moved bison onto this site, and he is preparing for blackfooted ferrets.

All the Turner people diplomatically duck the issue their program raises. If a private landowner can more cheaply, quickly and efficiently return endangered species to the wild, why not give him a shot at the job?

Given the grotesque legal monsters begotten by extremists on both sides, wolf lovers may want to experiment more--not less--with the antiquated, inefficient Endangered Species Act. For some species, at least, we may need to work even more cooperatively. We may need to turn from public lands to large private landowners. Rancher Means is right when he puts his finger on the property issue. All that’s missing is ownership: We should amend the Endangered Species Act to allow for some experiments in secure private ownership. Why not allow Turner and other private concerns like The Nature Conservancy to own, breed and manage private wolves on their private lands?

Wolves will howl again on the hunt in the Southwest. Most people don’t much care who owns the wolves. They support timely wolf recovery. Few care how it happens. If we have to choose between wolf recovery on private land and no wolf recovery at all, let’s cast our lot with the likes of Turner.