By Hannah Grover
A wildlife advocate says there are resources available to help ranchers reduce the number of cattle killed by wolves, even as Catron County issued an emergency declaration this week calling the lobos a threat to public health and safety.
The Catron County Commission met Thursday in Reserve to discuss the growing population of Mexican gray wolves, which some residents say are killing livestock and pets.
After the meeting, Bryan Bird with Defenders of Wildlife told NM Political Report about some of the efforts his organization is involved in to help ranchers in the Catron County area.
Bird said he is sorry to hear that Catron County residents feel unheard and believe that they aren’t receiving the help they need.
“They are the ones that have to experience this first hand,” he said.
While Bird said he is sympathetic to the concerns that ranchers have, he emphasized the importance of predators in the ecosystem and said ranchers are often operating on public lands.
Bird said the government needs to balance the benefits of public lands, including the wildlife resources.
“These [ranchers] are running private businesses on public lands,” he said.
Additionally, advocates say ranchers tend to rely on government subsidies.
Bird said ranchers receive payments for cattle losses and are also reimbursed for activities to reduce conflict with wolves.
Defenders of Wildlife has partnered with ranchers for many years to reduce losses.
Bird said the organization spends a significant amount of its budget helping ranchers with “the cost of doing business in wolf country.”
Those efforts include range riders and other methods of getting between the wolves and the cattle.
“We’ll match the cost of having somebody out there on the land,” Bird said.
He said Defenders also helps with flagging – surrounding the calving cows with a material to scare away wolves.
The Catron County resolution states that the “Government has continually lied about the nature of Mexican wolves, claiming that Mexican wolves rarely prey on livestock and that the County’s livestock would only minimally be effected [sic].”
The resolution further states that the “destruction of livestock by Mexican wolves has exponentially exploded to disaster levels” and that the wolves are harming both the hunting and livestock industries.
“People have been conditioned to be afraid of wolves,” Bird said.
He said wolves are not dangerous to humans and, while they will kill cattle, he doesn’t think the wolves are taking as many cows as ranchers claim.
The resolution cites the county investigator Shawn Menges’ claims that, since 2004, the wolves have caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual losses of cattle and led to thousands of missing cows.
Bird said those missing cattle may not necessarily be as a result of wolf activity. Cattle deaths are not uncommon on rangelands and some of the leading causes include weather and disease.
At the same time, he acknowledged living near wolves takes a toll on cattle. That can lead to less weight gain and miscarriage of calves.
“Anytime a rancher loses a cow, it hurts their pocketbooks,” Bird said.
Bird said advocates would like to see changes so that ranchers aren’t simply compensated for the loss of livestock.
“We want to shift the entire paradigm from paying for dead cows to paying for live wolves,” he said.
Wildlife advocates have questioned the accuracy of depredation numbers reported by the federal government and, in 2023, the Wildlife Services implemented new methods to ensure a more accurate count. The stronger standards implemented two years ago are intended to ensure wolves are not falsely blamed for livestock death.
According to Catron County Manager Deborah Mahler, it would cost more than $900,000 to adequately staff the county’s wolf investigation program.
“As someone raised in rural New Mexico, I know firsthand the value of our land, our livestock, and our way of life,” state Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte, said in a statement. “The growing threat posed by the Mexican gray wolf is not just an inconvenience—it is an affront to the safety and livelihood of thousands of New Mexican families. I fully support Catron County’s disaster declaration and urge state and federal officials to take immediate action. Our communities should not have to live in fear while their concerns go unanswered.”
As drought grips Catron County, ranchers are facing hard decisions such as whether to downsize their herds. Already, many ranchers rely on other sources of income to supplement their ranching practices.
Bird said wolves can help ranchers in times of drought by controlling herbivore herds, which can improve water quality and forage.
At the same time, he said wolves could provide economic benefits in terms of attracting tourism, as has been seen in the Yellowstone area in Wyoming and Montana.
“I don’t want to tell them how to live their lives or what to do,” Bird said, but added that wolf tourism could potentially help the economy in Catron County.
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