Mexican grey wolves are to blame for all kinds of cattle deaths in Catron County, so we seek to see for ourselves, by examining predation reports, how the USDA Wildlife Service investigates dead farm animals and makes Mexican wolves the culprits. Spoiler alert: this is not convincing. (I have already written about this here, but I sought to give more examples to those of you who stick to history.)
For example, in this report of 31 January 2019, the remains of a 2-day calf have become a “shown” wolf. (Parsing on public grounds at 7100 feet in January sounds crazy, but that’s another story.) There was less than a quarter of the body left, and it had already moved from the place where it was discovered. There’s no photo showing up the body in the landscape, just the rest of the hind legs of a calf in the tray of a truck. However, the researchers decided that it was eaten from back to head (the trend consistent with wolves), had no head or torso or anything to determine the order of feeding. They discovered dog discrepancies and compression marks on the skin, none of which resulted in the calf being alive if (or when) was devoured by anything with dog teeth from 40.4 mm to 42.3 mm, dimensions that can also be attributed to wild. dogs or mountain lions. Array It is vital to note that there are also no images of the alleged compression hole in the report. But instead of considering it a “probable” murder of a wolf, investigators showed it.
Here’s another one from the same time that happened when the government closed in 2019.The wildlife officer wasn’t working, so when he returned to the office, they “examined” someone else’s work. I fix Probably, but not demonstrable due to suppressions, that other person was Jess Carey, the personal investigator of Catron County wolves. As far as we can tell, Carey’s only biological grades are an old one for wolves. The report shows another dead calf in the back of a pickup truck. The only evidence was coiled rocks and “canine scales on the leg of the calf”. Interestingly, the images also show compression discrepancies (they are supposed to show where the wolf was locked up), but there is no evidence of the type of bleeding that would imply that the calf was alive when those bites occurred. Prieto’s herd was in the domain at the time, so it was some other CONFIRMED murder. Ka-ching!
Here’s another where they admit there’s no evidence – none – but it’s a probable wolf homicide, so the refund drops to 50% but it’s at $975.00. This determination was discovered in other wolf killings in the area, and nothing else. And, interestingly, they did not discover bite marks on the corpse, although they also reported that the coyotes had fed on it.
And here’s another where a Mexican wolf (at most, 80 pounds) killed a bull (weighing 1,800 pounds on average), even though there are other animals in the area, which goes against any wisdom that predators have. kill the simplest prey. Even the largest wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains rarely, or never, feed on bulls, but this smaller subspecies of Mexican wolves manage to do so frequently. It’s true that their strategies are a little strange.
But I don’t need to decide simply on Catron County, because wildlife facilities are guilty of investigating the wolf killings imaginable, even without Jess Carey’s “experience.” Maybe this near Vernon in Apache County, Arizona, would raise flags? The cow had been dead for about 14 days, however, the other cows in the grass were still nervous when wildlife facilities arrived. The remains were taken from the box through the breeder and is literally just a piece of leg. The report indicates that photographs of the site have been taken and attached, but this is not the case. There is no evidence of bleeding (which is evident every time a predator kills a giant animal, rather than recovering a dead corpse) in two of the images that claim to show it either. And without any evidence yet some teeth marks (whose dimensions, again, overlap with other predators), this “dead wolf” was CONFIRMED. It turns out that Arizona’s wildlife facilities also have an explanation to give.
We sincerely hope that federal officials will pay attention to these suspicious reports and that those who file them will be fired. If it’s a careless job, it’s unacceptable. If it’s intentional fraud, it’s a crime. And in any case, these fraudulent determinations hinder the recovery of Mexican wolves in the southwest, and this is the biggest crime of all.