According to the Washington Post article, “Legacy of a lost wolf,” dated 25 December 2009, by Betsy Karasik, Mexican gray wolves are one of the most endangered mammals in North America. Despite a campaign by farmers, ranchers, and government agencies to eradicate the wolves, eleven of them were reintroduced to the wild in Arizona and New Mexico in 1998.
Unfortunately, ranchers have cattle on millions of acres of federal land in the West supported by government subsidies that cost the U.S. taxpayers 135 million dollars a year. Apparently under an Agricultural Department program, we the taxpayers for the benefit of said subsidized ranchers, exterminate more than 100,000 carnivores deemed to be detrimental to the ranchers that we subsidize. Animals exterminated include bears, wolves, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons and cougars using methods such as leg hold traps, aerial shooting and poisoning.
The article focuses later on a breeding wolf female who was shot, which is tragic. What is more tragic is that the female and family were targeted for preying on livestock for which the ranchers are compensated. Why should we kill a predator of livestock and then compensate the rancher for the death of said livestock? If we, “the effing government,” are going to pay ranchers for livestock killed by an endangered species, what is the justification for killing the predator?