Outdoor News Daily

Mexican wolf reintroduction in northern Mexico will be discussed in an Arizona Game and Fish Commission meeting on August 7, 2009. The public meeting will be at the Arizona Game and Fish Department headquarters, at 5000 W. Carefree Highway in Phoenix (1.5 miles west of I-17). The Mexican wolf agenda item will be heard at 10:30 am (time certain). A variety of other agenda items will be covered on August 7 and on August 8.

The public is invited to attend the Commission meeting at the Department headquarters or to be part of a test of Internet streaming of the meeting. The meeting will only be available on-line on a live basis as the meeting happens. The on-line coverage of both Commission sessions (August 7 and 8) will be found at: http://www.azgfd.gov/.

Background

Mexico has announced its intent to release captive Mexican wolves, perhaps as early as October-November 2009, in northern Mexico (in eastern Sonora and western Chihuahua). On August 7, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will brief the Commission on how this project has been developed and on the potential for post-release dispersal into southern Arizona and New Mexico. The Service will also address other issues pertaining to wolves that disperse from Mexico into the AZ-NM borderlands, including: their legal (protected) status under federal law; how they will be detected, monitored, and managed; how reports of nuisance and livestock depredation incidents will be investigated; how impacts on big game populations will be detected and mitigated; how nuisance and depredating wolves will be managed; how proactive interdiction, incentive, and compensation measures will be funded and administered; and how outreach will be handled to make stakeholders and interested parties in southern Arizona and New Mexico and the general public aware of the project and the ramifications of post-release dispersal from Mexico into the United States.

In the August 7 Commission meeting, the Department will provide a summary of previous (October 2008) guidance from the Commission regarding Department participation in Mexican wolf conservation. The Department will also ask the Commission to reaffirm or provide new or additional policy guidance to the Department on participation in Mexican wolf conservation in Mexico.

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