ALBUQUERQUE — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists reached an agreement Friday that scraps a rule the agency had used to kill or permanently remove any wolf that killed three head of livestock in a year.
Fish and Wildlife spokesman Tom Buckley said the three-strikes rule “will no longer stand.”
The agency has other ways to deal with livestock kills “and remains committed to assisting the local livestock operators in any negative impacts they may have related to wolves,” Buckley said.
Environmentalists contended the rule favored the ranching industry and was a major roadblock to the effort to recover the species in the wild. Ranchers said the policy targeted wolves that grow accustomed to preying on cattle.
Several environmental groups sued in May 2008, asking a U.S. District Court in Arizona to stop the removal policy on the Mexican gray wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf. Buckley said agency officials hope a judge signs the settlement next week.
There are about 50 wolves in Arizona and New Mexico — half of what biologists had hoped to have by now.
The effort has been hampered by illegal shootings, complaints from ranchers who have lost cattle to the wolves and removal of wolves that violated the three-strikes rule.
The Fish and Wildlife Service began backing off rigid enforcement of the policy this year.
Southwest Regional director Benjamin Tuggle in June allowed an alpha male wolf linked to four livestock killings to remain free in southwestern New Mexico.
He said the wolf had produced pups and removing him could hurt the program. Only the alpha pair of each pack has pups each year.
The end of the rule leaves Fish and Wildlife with “extraordinary discretion over when to remove wolves,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of nine groups that filed the 2008 lawsuit.
