Did you know that the Mexican gray wolf is an endangered species that was deliberately exterminated, rescued from extinction with a captive breeding program, and has only recently recovered to a few hundred animals.
And Trump just signed an executive order that might allow cattle ranchers to start killing them again.
By the late nineteenth century, cattle and sheep ranching had spread across the Southwest. Wolves killed some livestock, and ranchers lobbied government to treat them as enemies of settlement. Bounties were offered to private citizens who killed them.
The government sent professional hunters into wolf country with traps, rifles, dogs, and poison. They trapped wolves with steel traps that held their leg. They dug pups out of dens. But the most disgusting way they killed them was with poison.
A dead cow, horse, deer, or other animal was laced with poison and left where wolves were expected to feed. Pieces of poisoned meat were placed along trails, near water, and around carcasses. They used strychnine, Compound 1080, and cyanide devices. This did not only kill the wolf, it killed any animal that came across the poisoned meat, including scavengers, coyotes, foxes, birds, and domestic dogs.
In 1950, the US gave Mexico poison, equipment, and instruction to help Mexican ranchers kill the remaining wolves. By the 1970s, the Mexican gray wolf was close to extinction. It was listed as endangered in 1976.
Then public opinion shifted and conservation groups started winning court battles, even though the livestock industry fought tooth and nail to drive the wolf to extinction.
Between 1977 and 1980, five wild Mexican wolves were captured. Along with two wolves already in captivity, they became the seven founders of the new breeding program.
Today there are 319 Mexican grey wolves that are still listed as endangered. And the livestock industry is once again pressuring the government to let them start killing the wolves again. This is what led to Trump’s recent executive order.
If you care about the wolves, like I do, we need to make our voices louder than the cattle ranchers.
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I plan to make a longer video this Sunday about wolves and their relationship with Native Americans before the Europeans arrived.
