Take a look at this article, and then if you and your family ever expect to enjoy the Tonto National Forest again, send your objections to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service about this city-environmentalist driven plan. 1) The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services plans to reintroduce wolves to Gila, Coconino, Navajo, and Graham counties. Comment HERE. 2) The USFWS also intends to retain the "endangered" status of Mexican gray wolves. This means you could be fined $500 if you shoot one, even while its ripping the hindquarters and intestines out of your dog, or chewing off your cat’s head…right before your children’s eyes. Comment HERE.
Deadline for comments is 12/17/2013. Two public meetings have been set for 12/3/2013 in Pinetop. Click HERE for information.
Here are some excerpts from a Nov. 7, 2013 Tucson Weekly article:.
Dean Warren has a story to tell about how Mexican Gray wolves stole one of the best parts of his life.He was on horseback on a mountain trail south of Rose Peak, in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, when four wolves attacked him and his six blue tick hounds, setting off a ferocious struggle.
“Picture 10 animals in a dogfight under your horse, and you know what I’m talking about,” says Warren, then a rancher and range deputy for the Greenlee County Sheriff’s Office.
“I’m being attacked by wolves!” he hollered into his police radio. “I need help!”
He yelled and fired shots into the air, but the wolves kept coming. The desperate brawl lasted two hours. Warren’s fighting retreat brought him to Sawmill Cabin, where he closed himself inside a barn, the animals pacing and howling outside.
Something–probably the arrival of rescuers–caused them to quit, and Warren, 62 years old at the time and a crack outdoorsman, headed home, considering himself lucky. If his horse hadn’t been accustomed to dogs, he says he could’ve been thrown to the ground and injured or killed.
But the funny part, the tragic part, the unbelievable part, is the idea of a cowboy, alone, in a death struggle with vicious animals–and what’s running through his mind, apart from not turning into wolf kibble?
Lawyers.
“I definitely felt threatened, but I knew that if I shot those wolves, I could pay a huge fine and maybe get years in jail,” says Warren. “Hiring a lawyer would break me. I don’t have that kind of money in my hip pocket.”
Warren’s fight happened three years ago, and the news traveled quickly along the straw-hat grapevine. The facts put a chill in everybody’s day, especially the part about one wolf jumping up to put its paws on the horse’s flanks, snapping and growling.
“That scared all of us,” says Dan Groebner, supervisor of Arizona Game and Fish’s wolf field team. “Wolves aren’t supposed to behave that way.”
Dramatic as they were, the details never traveled far beyond ranch country, and probably wouldn’t have been heard if they did. For city environmentalists, the thought of the lobo howling in the wild again–the deep emotion of that concept, the romantic resonance of it–has the power to deafen, even though most probably couldn’t distinguish a wolf call from Sting.
Dean Warren was eventually driven off his land.
"The stress they caused is enormous," says Warren. "I’d be out working fences or laying pipe, and I always had that old yellow eye looking down on me. It became impossible to live ther. If it wasn’t for the major holdings people have, it’d just be picknickers and retirees left out there."
Like most ranchers, he believes that was the true purpose of wolf reintroduction–getting ranchers off public land, permanently and forever.
Adios cowboy. "That’s it partner. That’s the whole deal right there."
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