S3E31: Return of the Lobo: Restoring Texas' Mexican Wolves

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0: 00: 00 - (Chris Clarke): This podcast is made possible by financial support from our listeners. If you're not supporting us yet, check out 90 miles from needles.com donate or text the word needles to 53555.

0: 00: 24 - (Joe Geoffrey): Think the deserts are Barren wastelands, Think again. It's time for 90 miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast.

0: 01: 27 - (Chris Clarke): Welcome to another episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Clarke. Somewhere between 70,000 and 23,000 years ago, the first gray wolves migrated from Eurasia into North America. The descendants of some of those wolves became the extinct Beringian wolf, which lived during the Ice Age and inhabited what we now call Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia. The Beringian wolf can't be seen anymore, but it established a family of wolves that survived. After the Beringian wolf died out in 2021, a study of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from mother to child, indicated that the Beringian wolf was the ancestor of what's called the Southern Wolf Clade.

0: 02: 13 - (Chris Clarke): A clade is a group of related organisms that all have a common ancestor. The Southern Wolf clade includes the Great Plains wolf, the extinct Southern Rockies wolf, and the Mexican wolf. Mexican wolves are the smallest of the gray wolves living in North America, and when settlers first arrived in the Southwest, Mexican wolves lived in Southern California, Baja California, Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas, the states of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Guahuila, and among many other regrettable deeds of those 18th and 19th and 20th century ancestors of today's settler population in the Southwest hunted and harassed the Mexican wolf to the precipice of extinction. From 1915 to 1920, Mexican wolf populations crashed in the southwestern United states. There were 103 Mexican wolves in New Mexico in 1917.

0: 03: 07 - (Chris Clarke): Ten years later, there were no Mexican wolves in New Mexico. There were a few encounters of Mexican wolves through the 1950s, with wolves coming across the border from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The last wild Mexican wolves in Texas were killed in 1970. In 1976, the Mexican wolf was listed as intensive endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. In the late 70s. Between 1977 and 1984, male wolves and a pregnant female were captured in the states of Durango and Chihuahua in Mexico, which for a time meant that the Mexican wolf was extinct in the wild. But those wolves were captured to establish breeding colonies in the U.S. and by the end of the 20th century, the captive Mexican wolf population in the U.S. and Mexico was getting close to 200 individuals. In March of this year, the wild Mexican wolf population in the US was at least 250 more than half of those in New Mexico and the remainder in Arizona. The released progeny of those five wolves captured in Mexico in the late 70s are doing pretty well. They still have to contend with human resentment and fear, but they do offer a kind of hope that maybe, if we're good, our great grandchildren and their great grandchildren will still live in a world with wild Mexican wolves roaming the Southwest. As for me, I can't think of a description of our interactions with Mexican wolves and how we brought them to the brink of extinction than the well-known passage in the essay Thinking Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold. That essay would later be included in his book A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949. The passage that sticks in my memory, as it may well in yours, is as we were eating lunch on a high rim rock at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way, we saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in whitewater. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error. It was a wolf. A half dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows, and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock. In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy.

0: 05: 29 - (Chris Clarke): How to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing when our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide rocks. We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. It's now more than 50 years since the last Mexican wolf was able to roam the plains and mountains and canyons of West Texas, often called by locals the Trans Pecos. Everything west of the Pecos River in Texas is pretty much part of the Chihuahuan Desert, and there were Mexican wolves that wandered around what would now be called Marfa or Alpine or El Paso or Las Cruces and the Texas Lobo Coalition is working to restore the wolf as an apex predator where it once played a role in maintaining the balance of nature. In the Chihuahuan Desert, they're approaching this not by some kind of top-down government driven directive overriding the will of the locals. Instead, the Texas Lobo Coalition is working to develop enthusiasm among those locals for reintroduction of the Mexican wolf. I was privileged to speak with three of the members of the Board of Directors of the Texas Lobo Coalition, Erin Hunt, Rick LoBello, and Philip Sozanski, and we had a great conversation that I think you're going to enjoy. But first, as always, I want to remind you that this podcast doesn't happen without listener support, and we are always grateful to those of you who are supporting us. If you're not supporting us yet and you've meant to, or you're just hearing about it right now and you like the idea, you can go to 90miles from needles.com

0: 07: 25 - (Chris Clarke): donate. You'll get a bunch of different options for providing us a little bit of cash one time or on a recurring basis. This is where I would mention the names of the people that have donated since the last episode and we don't have any, so you can be first in line for mention in the next episode. 90 miles from needles.com donate we are very grateful for all the support that we get from our listeners. For those of you who are either already donating or aren't in a position to do so, we like to offer some ways that you can make significant and really important but non-monetary contributions to our effort here. And here's this week's suggestion slash request. We're heading into the end of the year and year end is when nonprofits like the Desert Advocacy Media Network, our nonprofit mothership, make most of their money. One of the things that we're working on is having social media videos in which listeners who like what we're doing just offer a couple of sentences, two or three sentences about why they value 90 miles from needles the Desert Protection Podcast. Now I happen to know that it's extremely likely that you have a really sophisticated video camera in your pocket. It right now in your purse, in your backpack, on the desk next to you. Pick it up, aim it at your face and just talk about why you like 90 miles from needles. Don't worry about the ums and the ers and the you knows and the false starts. We can take care of those or we can leave them in as your preference dictates. But you'd be surprised just how important it is for Somebody other than me to be saying this stuff. If you value 90 miles from needles and you say so and you encourage people to listen and to support, that carries more weight than if I do it because I'm biased, I'll gladly cop to that.

0: 09: 10 - (Chris Clarke): I'm also biased in favor of Mexican wolves. So I'm really excited to jump into our conversation with Rick Lobello, Philip Sozanski, and Erin Hunt from the Texas Lobo Coalition, with huge thanks to our friend John Resendis for helping us set this episode up. So let's go to that interview with the Texas Lobo Coalition.

0: 10: 20 - (Chris): We are here live in our virtual studio at 90 Miles from Needles Desert Protection Podcast. We're joined by Erin Hunt, Phillip Sozanski, and Rick Lobello from the Texas Lobo Coalition. Rick, why don't you provide a little intro, and I'll ask Erin and Philip to do the same.

0: 10: 38 - (Rick LoBello): I'm Rick LoBello, and I used to be a park ranger in Big Bend national park, and also I was the executive director of the Big Bend Natural History association. And now I'm the education and conservation curator at the El Paso Zoo and Botanical Gardens, where we have a pack of Mexican wolves. And when I was a park ranger in Big Bend, I actually got a chance to see one of the very first wolves brought into the United States for the captive breeding program when the animal was almost extinct.

0: 11: 11 - (Chris): That's an impressive resume, and I envy you your service in Big Bend. It's a beautiful place. I was there for the first time in February of this year, and it's pretty amazing.

0: 11: 20 - (Rick LoBello): It is.

0: 11: 21 - (Chris): Erin, why don't we go with you next?

0: 11: 22 - (Erin Hunt): Happy to be here. So honored to be part of this. My name is Erin Hunt, and I've worked with Mexican wolves for about 16 years now. I started out working with a conservation center that's part of the Saving Animals from Extinction program, or the SAFE Program. Used to be known as the Species Survival Program, but that's the captive breeding program that helped restore Mexican wolves to Arizona and New Mexico. So I got to work with the animals. I did public education and outreach.

0: 11: 50 - (Erin Hunt): I also had a chance to manage a coexistence fund, working with ranchers in Arizona and New Mexico and with researchers in Mexico as well, to try to make sure that the communities living with wolves as they were returning to the landscape had the tools and the techniques they needed to successfully coexist. We know coexistence is possible, so it was such a huge honor to be able to work with some of the ranching communities in those areas to make sure that they were set up for success and that wolves were able to have the best available habitat for them.

0: 12: 21 - (Erin Hunt): And then now I'm in a more advocacy focused role. I work with an organization called Lobos of the Southwest. And we are just a group of educators and scientists and concerned community members working to save Lobos through advocacy and direct action. And I think that's it. That's me.

0: 12: 39 - (Chris): Philip.

0: 12: 41 - (Philip Sozanski): Yes. Hi. Thank you for having us. My name is Philip Sozanski, and I teach AP US History and AP Research at Vista Ridge High School in Cedar Park, Texas. I'm also an independent historian, and I've, as of the last decade or so, really felt myself drawn to environmental history and particularly the history of the wolf in Texas. And so when I discovered the Texas Lobo Coalition, I knew that it was an organization that I needed to be a part of somehow.

0: 13: 17 - (Philip Sozanski): And I just consider myself very fortunate to have been asked to join the board and to now have the opportunity to contribute to hopefully restoring the Mexican gray wolf to its rightful place in the landscape of Texas.

0: 13: 32 - (Chris): Does one of you want to explain what the Texas Lobo Coalition is? What are you working on?

0: 13: 38 - (Rick LoBello): Since I'm one of the only remaining co-founders, I'll begin by saying that this is the second attempt in Texas to bring back the wolf to the wilds of Texas. And we started off in 1990 with the Mexican Wolf Coalition of Texas. And we discovered at that time that there was no way we were going to convince the powers that be that we could make something like that happen. But we did help to return the wolf to Arizona and New Mexico.

0: 14: 08 - (Rick LoBello): And then about three or four years ago, I met Hope Carr from the Austin Zoo, and somehow we ended up talking about wolves, which actually is my favorite subject anyway. And I said, why don't we start up another organization? And that's how we got started.

0: 14: 24 - (Chris): That's great. Do you have a quota of wolves that you want to see wandering around the trans pecos by 2040? How are you approaching this really inspiring idea of getting the wolves back into Texas?

0: 14: 34 - (Rick LoBello): Let me correct you. First of all, it's the Trans Pecos, not the Pecos, the Pecos River. And our main aim is to find a way to give this animal a chance to return to its native landscape. And I think everybody knows about the conflicts between wolves and cattle over the years. As a matter of fact, my good friend Roy McBride made a point of telling me over and over again when he went down into Mexico to capture the last wolves before they went extinct in the wild completely.

0: 15: 09 - (Rick LoBello): He said they were feeding on cattle. And I'm not even sure if, given the choice, they would always prefer a deer over a cow. But the bottom line is wolves do have a role in the landscape. And our aim is to find a way to make it work, at least in part of Texas where they used to live, perhaps in Big Bend national park or Big Bend Ranch, whatever, wherever there's land that can accommodate there and provide the prey base they need.

0: 15: 40 - (Rick LoBello): But. But in Texas, it's mainly private land. It's 98% private land. So if it's going to work, it's going to have to have the support of private landowners. And that's how the government works in Texas. You just don't shove something down someone's throat and say you get. You have to do it. Even in Big Bend, the managers of Big Bend national park aren't going to support a wolf recovery plan of any type that doesn't take in consideration the needs of local people.

0: 16: 11 - (Rick LoBello): I believe the most important thing that we are doing today is to try to find a way to make it work by getting some conversations going with the landowners. And back in 1990, over 34 years ago, when we first started this effort, and I was a part of it then, our main opposition was from Texas Parks and Wildlife who said that the landowners just aren't going to support that at all. They're having enough problems with mountain lions, for example, as predators and coyotes.

0: 16: 46 - (Rick LoBello): We're not going to go there. But I have been paying close attention to the land ownership in that area, and it's changed dramatically in the past 30 years. A lot of the people who opposed it 30 years ago aren't even alive. And a lot of those big ranches are no longer cattle producing ranches. They're just big areas of land that millionaires have bought because they want to buy a lot of land and have their own little refuge.

0: 17: 13 - (Rick LoBello): So no one has ever started a conversation with those landowners today in 2024. So I think our main goal is to get those conversations going and find out who's in support, support of what we're trying to do. And then hopefully Texas Parks and Wildlife and U.S. fish and Wildlife Service are going to see that there is support out there because we've already heard some of it already and that they would support a plant, but nothing's ever going to happen as far as a human caused reintroduction. Now, if wolves come back on their own, say from Mexico, like the black bear did, that's a whole different story. They're protected by the Endangered Species act, but that's not looking like something that's going to happen in the near future. But it could happen.

0: 17: 59 - (Rick LoBello): So the bottom line is our organization is trying to get that conversation going and we're raising money on a GoFundMe campaign to actually hire someone to live out there with the ranchers and other landowners to get those relationships going.

0: 18: 16 - (Chris): That's great. And thank you for the correction. I am educated and I'll be able to go about my life sounding just a little bit less like a Californian. Now.

0: 18: 25 - (Rick LoBello): That's okay.

0: 18: 26 - (Chris): You say that there haven't been any formal conversations with the landowners. Have you done a little bit of background research? Do you have a sense of who you're going to prioritize? Are there any budding Ted Turners out there that own large spreads near Terlingua or Marfa that you might hit up first?

0: 18: 45 - (Rick LoBello): We've been working on and I personally have been trying to make some contacts myself. But when you're a multi billionaire millionaire person, you're not the easiest person to reach on the phone. I have talked to the Hart Ranch family. The Hart family, they used to own a big ranch near Big Bend and the land was donated to Big Bend National Park, I believe. I'm not sure how that happened, but the Hart Ranch family, based in Fort Davis, has been very much in support of efforts to protect all wildlife, including predators.

0: 19: 19 - (Rick LoBello): They actually supported a documentary about what's happening to predators in Texas. It's definitely not a predator friendly state. A lot of them just don't want to get involved for fear of peer pressure from their neighbors who are against it. But there are some now as, like I said, times have changed. There's new owners out there. And just the other day I talked to a man who owns a big chunk of land near Sierra Blanca and he said, yeah, I want to support what you guys are doing. I'm trying to restore the land from what it was before it was over grazed.

0: 19: 53 - (Rick LoBello): And I've actually talked to ranchers in West Texas, not recently, but over the past 40 years who have told me, you know what, I like the idea of wolves on my land, but I'm afraid if I go public, my neighbor's not going to let me drive down that particular road that I need to drive to get to my ranch. So that's part of the problem. But I think there's enough people out there who are new landowners that we can overcome that problem. We just have to identify who they are and how to reach them.

0: 20: 24 - (Chris): That's great. So what is the effect of the. The wolves being absent from this part of Texas? You see the social media videos of bringing wolves back to Yellowstone and how that changes the way the animals interact and it changes the way the vegetation grows and all that kind of stu. Is there a story to tell along those lines with the absence of the lobo from Texas?

0: 20: 48 - (Rick LoBello): I think the most obvious thing that's happening is the landscape has been overcome with exotic species like aldad and wild boar. If there were more predators out there, perhaps the problem would not be as intense as it is today. I believe that one of the reasons why the deer herd and the pronghorn herd in West Texas is not as healthy as it should be is because of the absence of predators. For example, the pronghorn have suffered greatly from a disease, but maybe that disease might not have been as powerful if the health. If the herd was healthier.

0: 21: 23 - (Rick LoBello): And one of the things that can affect a pronghorn population is the presence or absence of coyotes. And coyotes have been abundant for a long time in West Texas and they will prey on pronghorn fawns. But if you have wolves, they help to control coyotes. So I think there's a lot of things like that that have been affected, but no one has actually that I know of done a scientific study to look at it in a more scientific way.

0: 21: 55 - (Rick LoBello): But that's just my opinion.

0: 21: 57 - (Joe Geoffrey): Don't go away. We'll be right back.

0: 22: 02 - (Chris Clarke): Are you looking for the perfect desert book? Head over to thedamn.org books. That's T-H-E-D-A-M-N.org books.  The Desert Advocacy Media Network's online desert bookstore offers a curated selection of titles on desert life, ecology and adventure in the arid lands of the American Southwest. Plus, all sales go through bookshop.org, which supports your favorite independent bookstore. Along with Desert Advocacy Media Network and this podcast, our bookstore is a great way to grab a good book without feeding the big online retailers. Visit T-H-E-D a m n.org books and start exploring. Today.

0: 22: 51 - (Joe Geoffrey): You're listening to 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection podcast. Don't step on the cryptobiotic soil crusts.

0: 23: 00 - (Chris Clarke): Before the break, Rick was telling us that while there haven't been really authoritative studies on how the presence or absence of wolves changes the Chihuahuan desert landscape, that there was significant evidence that the presence of Mexican wolves was really beneficial for West Texas.

0: 23: 15 - (Chris): Erin, does that assessment extend beyond the boundaries of the state of Texas? You've worked with Mexican wolves in a bunch of other places. Is this something that's a unique situation in West Texas or is this something that is predictable given just who Mexican wolves are and what they like to eat?

0: 23: 33 - (Erin Hunt): Yeah, I think we can even extend it a little farther to just wolves that they sell a really important role in our environment. And we've seen this in multiple areas throughout North America where wolves have been wiped out, that we've seen now decades of impacts on landscape. And there there's even some research coming out that we haven't designed our ecological studies in such a way to account for that absence.

0: 23: 59 - (Erin Hunt): So we're just missing a whole perspective in our research about how important carnivores or how important wolves are to ecosystems. And there is some research about the impacts that wolves have, the potential for trophic cascades. It's a complex set of relationships amongst many species and also some of the abiotic or the non-living factors in an environment. I think the bottom line is the ecology and the biology is simple.

0: 24: 28 - (Erin Hunt): When we have ecosystems that have all of the species that were meant to be there, including our large carnivores, those ecosystems are healthier, there's more biodiversity. And that means that both the animals and the plants that live there, but also the humans that depend on those ecosystems, we all benefit from that. So that's the simple part and the complicated part is how do we do that? Recognizing that these landscapes aren't a vacuum with their working landscapes, they're landscapes that are shared by people with many different perspectives and many values.

0: 25: 00 - (Erin Hunt): And I think Texas Local Coalition is really committed to approaching building relationships. The focus is less on wolves, it's more on people, it's more in relationships, it's on empathy, it's on fostering coexistence, and it's about restoring the natural heritage of Texas, restoring landscapes. So we're not necessarily asking people to love wolves. We're asking people, what do you need from this land that you care about? What do you need from this place that you live?

0: 25: 30 - (Erin Hunt): And how can we make this world and this community that you live in a healthier and thriving place?

0: 25: 38 - (Chris): What is the history of Mexican wolves in Texas? I know that we had them in California. I know that one of the last live wolves caught in California was caught in what's now the Mojave National Preserve in the Mojave Desert, and it was found much later to be a Mexican wolf. But I am ignorant of the history of the wolf in Texas. And Philip, it sounds like that might be something that you could address. But obviously, it's a question that's open to everyone.

0: 26: 03 - (Philip Sozanski): I think, you know, when you look at the experience of particularly Anglo settlers in Texas, their. Their persecution of wolves did not begin in earnest until really after the American Civil War. And even a huge pulse of it didn't even take off in the way that we would expect it to until Reconstruction was winding down. And more and more, it was an effort to gain greater control over the territory of the state.

0: 26: 40 - (Philip Sozanski): But there was also this push westward into territory that wasn't routinely used previous to the American Civil War because it had been so closed off by indigenous people, particularly the Comanche, the Kiowa, the Apache. And so the further west that Texans started to move, the more they encountered what they viewed as obviously adversarial relationships with wolves. So with the Mexican wolf, it was routinely referred to as the lobo wolf, sometimes nicknamed the loafer wolf.

0: 27: 18 - (Philip Sozanski): And the drive to exterminate these wolves was not just a societal one, it was also legislative. And there were periodically efforts that were made by members of the legislature, particularly from the 1870s forward, to see an act for the destruction of wolves past. And it only happened very incrementally and in fits and starts because the state of Texas was notoriously stingy with its. Its finances.

0: 27: 52 - (Philip Sozanski): And so anything that smacked of paying out of state coffers, whether it be for wolf bounties or whatnot, was not something that the legislature was really very keen to entertain. But ultimately, that. That did happen to certain degrees. For the average settler, a wolf of any kind, whether it's a red wolf in East Texas or it's a buffalo wolf in the Panhandle, or it's Mexican wolves in West Texas, wolves in general were viewed as a scourge.

0: 28: 33 - (Philip Sozanski): And there's so much history wrapped up in that that it goes back not just to our Puritan ancestors in New England or those who happen to move from the Southeast into Texas during Spanish colonization, It actually goes back, it predates all of that, to medieval Europe and the Catholic Church making a calculated decision to demonize wolves as. As being essentially devil dogs, as the companions of Satan himself. Trying to overcome that was certainly difficult for settlers in Texas at that time, but we're still dealing with the fallout of that today.

0: 29: 17 - (Philip Sozanski): Much of the prejudicial feeling that rural people in particular have towards wolves emanates from these much older and deeper historical prejudices and just lore. There's really no scientific reason and even lived reason to have the fear of and hatred for wolves that many people do in these areas. So it's really going back to this whole notion of engaging with the public and stakeholders and landowners.

0: 29: 53 - (Philip Sozanski): It has to be done in a way that you can help them to at least see a different perspective. Whether they're going to embrace it or not is a whole other story. But if education is really the key, at the end of the day.

0: 30: 11 - (Rick LoBello): If I could chime in for a second here to be a little bit more specific. According to my research, and I'm going not by just what I've read, but also talking to my good friend Roy McBride, who was a living legend during his time in predator control in Texas. We met when I was working on my master's degree at Sul Ross in 1974, and based on my conversations with him, and from what I've read, the wolf and the Mexican wolf, at least in Texas, has never been very common, but it did exist.

0: 30: 47 - (Rick LoBello): And most of the predator control against the wolf in West Texas, the area that we're focused on, actually occurred during the late 1800s and early 1900s, especially during the period when sheep ranching was big. Sheep ranching at that time did a tremendous amount of damage to the landscape that's still evident today. By the time the Mexican wolf was declared an endangered species, it had already been pretty well wiped out of Texas. But there were wandering males that did come into West Texas, and the last two on record that were killed south of alpine Texas near Cathedral Mountain in 1970, and at the same year in Taro county, not too far from Sanderson, Texas.

0: 31: 36 - (Rick LoBello): Now, there are records of wolves being traded on the border from the Castellan area of Big Bend national park and also some other outposts along the border. But there's not a whole lot of skulls out there to look at. But. But there are records where people have talked about the wolf. Audrey and Burrell Bryant did a study of all the mammals of that area before Big Bend national park was declared a Park in 1944.

0: 32: 03 - (Rick LoBello): And they mentioned conversations with landowners about wolves, but never being very abundant. But they were there, but nobody knows a whole lot about them because they were pretty well killed off before all of us biologists started moving out to West Texas to study the landscape.

0: 32: 21 - (Chris): Yeah, it struck me that there were a lot of large wildlife species that could be crossing if they wanted to right now. I was a little surprised on my initial visit to Big Bend this year to get down to Boquillas and see a stretch of the Rio Grande that a wolf could probably have walked across it that day and not gotten its belly fur wet.

0: 32: 43 - (Rick LoBello): Yeah, we Know, it could happen because there was a wolf that was part of the recovery plan in Mexico with a radio collar on it that actually came very close to the edge of El Paso and Juarez in 2017. That was just seven years ago. So we know that it's very possible that if wolves are given the chance, they will cross the border just like the black bears did from the mountains of northern Coahuila and Chihuahua.

0: 33: 10 - (Chris): Yep.

0: 33: 12 - (Chris): So just to address something that Philip brought up, because I think probably 90% of listeners to this podcast will have an affinity for wolves in general and tend to discount the. The fearful rumor mongering that goes on when wolf reintroduction is discussed. And I actually have a friend that lives in Catron County, New Mexico. And about 15 years ago, when Mexican wolves were becoming more populous there, the bus shelter, school bus shelter around the corner from her house got decked out with chicken wire and other such things to protect the children who would be presumably cowering inside the chicken wire fortified bus stop as Mexican wolves prowled around in circles till the bus came.

0: 33: 59 - (Chris): Which is, of course, ridiculous. But what threats do Mexican wolves reasonably pose to Texans? Personal safety or livelihood other than eating an occasional calf? Which can't say I blame them. It sounds a lot easier to take down than a fawn or a baby pronghorn and probably a lot easier to make financial restitution to the rancher in question. But are there serious concerns about public safety with Mexican wolves coming in?

0: 34: 32 - (Rick LoBello): I would say no. I think your chances of getting hurt by a mountain lion are 100 times more than a wolf.

0: 34: 39 - (Philip Sozanski): Yeah. And in the records that I've been sorting through in the course of my book, research have revealed no recorded instance of wolf attack on human beings. There's a lot of fear you may come across a cowboy out on the range and they've encamped for the night and they awaken to find a pack of six to eight wolves in South Texas prowling around their encampment. But that, but nothing happens there. It's. And of course, that's in the 1870s, 1880s.

0: 35: 20 - (Philip Sozanski): And so today we look at the, the literature going back several hundred years, there's literally a handful of instances where there's been a wolf attack on human beings in North America. And the likelihood, given the numbers we're talking about, that there would be any safety concern for human beings, particularly in that landscape. I think is. It is. It's. It's just absurd. I think, in my view, I think there are no safety concerns to speak of, apart from the occasional chicken or goat or calf.

0: 35: 56 - (Erin Hunt): Just to add on some experience, having worked directly with the animals for so many years, they're so shy. They. Even the wolves that are in managed care in the captive breeding program, you know, they're incredibly avoidant of people. They are retaining their natural environment instincts. And the SAFE program works really hard to make sure those wolves remain releasable and have all of those appropriate wild wolf behaviors.

0: 36: 21 - (Erin Hunt): And, yeah, there were days when we'd be trying to do our health observations and we'd be lucky if we could see them through binoculars from a distance. And they're just really. They may be curious about their environment and they're investigating through scents and things like that, but they're incredibly shy and just. Just try to avoid people at all costs. So we always tell people, if you see a wolf in the wild, count yourself lucky.

0: 36: 45 - (Erin Hunt): Snap a photo if you've got your camera, and that wolf is likely to head on its way on its own.

0: 36: 51 - (Chris): That's great. So this has been really interesting and very educational. I'm wondering if y'all have thought about collateral species as you make West Texas more receptive to wolves coming back to some degree, do you think that's going to increase the likelihood that people will be more accepting of other large carnivores, things like jaguars or ocelots or things like that? Just wondering if you have thoughts along those lines.

0: 37: 20 - (Rick LoBello): We've never talked about it at our board meetings, but I'm sure there's people out there that support wolves that also would support bringing back other species that were here at one time.

0: 37: 34 - (Erin Hunt): And adding on to that. I think we see. I'll take Arizona as an example. We are seeing jaguars come into Arizona. We are seeing ocelots, rare as it may be, come into Arizona. And so when we have our landscapes being restored, where we have all of the carnivores that are meant to be in those systems, it's a really incredible thing to see. And I think there are a lot of people who are inspired by that.

0: 37: 58 - (Erin Hunt): It gives hope that we recognize that we're in an extinction crisis. We are losing biodiversity faster than we can name species and study them. We're facing incredible threats from climate change. So many pressures on people and on ecosystems, but moments like that, where we see natural processes of animals moving and coming back to landscapes where they belong, it really gives a lot of hope that we can make a difference.

0: 38: 28 - (Erin Hunt): We can lay out the welcome mat to let these native carnivores come back to the places that they used to call home. And hopefully we'll call home again someday. But I think we will see some co restoration happening naturally. And a lot of that doesn't necessarily have to have a lot of human intervention involved. It's really opening up our minds to tolerance, to coexistence, to acceptance of sharing the landscape with many species.

0: 38: 56 - (Erin Hunt): And I think Texans are really used to doing that, to sharing, sharing wild places and sharing working landscapes with native species already. And the Lobo is just one more we hope to add to that list.

0: 39: 08 - (Philip Sozanski): I think a prime example of how much of a draw a carnivore can be in Texas is the success of the black bear in returning to Big Bend and how that has proven to be one of the tourist lures for people who visit that national park. And that wasn't done by human intervention. That was done by the bears themselves. They recolonized naturally on their own, and now they have a growing and thriving population.

0: 39: 45 - (Philip Sozanski): And it's unique and distinctive, and it's something that attracts the interest of people who find themselves in a situation where they didn't think they were going to experience that animal on that landscape. And I think if the Yellowstone reintroduction has taught us anything, it's that the potential is there for a similar experience in Big Bend. With respect to Mexican wolves.

0: 40: 14 - (Chris): So are they found in the Sierra del Carmen? Am I getting that name right? The Big Plateau, that's just south of Big Bend on the other side of the river. Do the wolves hang out there regularly?

0: 40: 25 - (Rick LoBello): No, there's no wolves over there, but there are records of wolves.

0: 40: 28 - (Chris): Okay.

0: 40: 29 - (Rick LoBello): And there has been talk of restoring the wolf. The company that is owning a chunk of that land within the protected area of the Maderas del Carmen is called Cemex. And Cemex is one of the biggest cement companies in the world. And they've been very proactive in supporting conservation wherever they work. They have been restoring a lot of animals to the landscape, including desert bighorns and pronghorn, and trying to help protect the deer herd and also trying to look at the possibility of bringing back bison.

0: 41: 04 - (Rick LoBello): So they're definitely a company that supports restoring the landscape to its natural state. But whether or not they're ready to deal with the big challenge of bringing back a predator like the wolf remains to be seen. But I know there has been talk over the years. Have you seen the coffee table books they've been producing over the years?

0: 41: 27 - (Chris): No.

0: 41: 29 - (Rick LoBello): I'll send you some information. It's amazing how they are. I would say out of all the conservation organizations out there, they have really shown their true colors through some of these giant coffee table books with not just pictures, but amazing stories where they've done research on rainforest on North American wildlife spectacles. They're definitely a very green company.

0: 41: 55 - (Chris): Yeah, I look forward to seeing some of that. That's really fascinating. Maybe we can get them on the podcast as well.

0: 42: 01 - (Rick LoBello): Yeah, I would love to learn more about that one.

0: 42: 04 - (Chris): Is there anything that I should have asked you folks that I have? Not anything. Any big topic areas that I've missed.

0: 42: 12 - (Rick LoBello): I was hoping you were going to ask us about how people could get involved with us because we definitely need more people, especially in Texas, helping us raise the funds. We need to hire someone to be our key person living out there with the ranchers, developing those relationships. We definitely need either members or just supporters to help us with grants and everything else that involves raising funds.

0: 42: 40 - (Rick LoBello): And also we need people who are living out there in West Texas that are owning large areas of land that can help us develop relationships with the landowner. If anybody wants to help us, please go to our website@texasglobalcoalition.org and contact us.

0: 42: 59 - (Chris): There as a very good anticipation of my usual last question. So thanks for that, Rick, Philip and Erin, any closing thoughts?

0: 43: 10 - (Erin Hunt): Yeah, I think we try to look at this natural restoration of wolves as really an opportunity for everyone. Philip talked about the potential for economic value, the boon to communities when, you know, people want to come visit and appreciate the beautiful natural heritage that Texas has. And having native carnivores in those ecosystems helps keep them beautiful and healthy so that people want to come visit.

0: 43: 38 - (Erin Hunt): So for everybody who's outside of Texas, there's a huge benefit to laying out the welcome mat for the lobo to come back to Texas. Texas. And for communities in Texas, there's a benefit to having healthier landscapes. We all depend on those landscapes for food, for places to live, for so many things that we need from our environment. And having those healthy, functioning ecosystems with all of the native species that belong there is so critical for everyone's future.

0: 44: 05 - (Erin Hunt): So we're really looking at this as just an opportunity for everyone coexist. Distance is absolutely possible. We know it works. We know that there are techniques that allow ranchers and other community members living in areas where wolves are returning or where wolves have been present the whole time to successfully live with wolves, have working landscapes, minimize or even eliminate economic losses.

0: 44: 30 - (Erin Hunt): So we, we definitely want to let landowners know that we are a resource for information about how to successfully live with these native carnivores.

0: 44: 41 - (Philip Sozanski): And I would just say that Texans are, and have been for most of their history, rabid about their history and about their heritage and about the distinctiveness of almost the exceptionalism of Texas as a place. And it seems really stark to me that the natural history of Texas is incomplete without the presence of this iconic species on the landscape. It is a key element of Texas heritage. Alongside bison, alongside wild horses, alongside mountain lions and black bears, and even at one point, grizzly bears.

0: 45: 33 - (Philip Sozanski): At what point do Texans ask themselves, how can we make this picture of our history full again? And I think that by bringing back species that are native, that belong here, that are an integral part of the natural history of the state, that that's a really good place to start in helping to rebuild that picture and rebuild that history.

0: 46: 02 - (Chris): Okay, that's wonderful. I am so grateful to you all for joining us here at 90 miles from Needles and telling us a bit about your work to advocate for the Mexican wolf, the Lobo in West Texas, and the Trans Pecos. See, I'm capable of learning. Erin Hunt, Philip Czanski, Rick Labello, thank you so much. And we will see if we can get some of our listeners to get in touch with you. I have a couple of acquaintances in Las Cruces who are big fans of the wolf, and Peter and Gene, you know what to do. Get in touch with these folks. I am likely to be out there more often myself, if only because the red or green chile in California really leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe we can all go for a hike sometime and pretend we spotted a wolf somewhere.

0: 46: 52 - (Rick LoBello): Thank you, sir.

0: 46: 53 - (Erin Hunt): Thank you so much for having us.

0: 46: 54 - (Philip Sozanski): Thank you so much.

0: 47: 33 - (Chris Clarke): Well, we're here at the end of another episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection podcast. And once again, I want to thank Erin Hunt, Rick LoBello, and Philip Sozansky of the Texas Lobo Coalition for talking to us today, as well as a huge thanks to John Rezendes of El Paso for helping us set up this interview, which was very rewarding for me. I learned a lot and not just how to pronounce Trans Pecos properly.

0: 47: 56 - (Chris Clarke): John, we just really appreciate your support in helping us put this together and promoting the podcast on your social media accounts. Hint, hint to the rest of you. I also want to thank Joe Geoffrey, our voiceover guy, and Martin Mancha, our podcast artwork creator. Our theme song, moody Western, is by Brightside Studio. Other music heard in this episode is courtesy the Wolf Conservation center, an excellent organization that definitely deserves your support. You can find them@nywolf.org that's NY like the abbreviation for New York wolf.org

0: 48: 34 - (Chris Clarke): and to give credit where it's really due, the performers we heard were Mexican wolves. Helene and Magdalena had an interesting wildlife encounter in our yard. Speaking of wild canids, which you can read all about in the most recent mailing from my Substack newsletter, Letters from the desert. Go to lettersfromthedesert.substack.com to see that. Starting to warm up a little bit. We got down into the low 50s at night here in Twentynine Palms, California in the Mojave Desert.

0: 49: 10 - (Chris Clarke): Probably going to be seeing low temperatures, about 20 degrees higher than that for a few days at least. But it's excellent hiking weather and so I want to remind you to take care of yourselves. Don't overdo it.  Have a lot of fun.

0: 49: 24 - (Chris Clarke): Go places you haven't been before. Let people know where you're going. Just get out and enjoy the desert. No sense in locking yourself to a.

0: 49: 31 - (Chris Clarke): Podcast all the time. Come back and listen to us. We'll still be here after your hike and I will see you at the next watering hole. Bye now.

0: 51: 46 - (Joe Geoffrey): 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.