Feds Retreat From Conspiracy
Talk In Wake Of Gun Evidence

ALBUQUERQUE — Only days ago, federal officials were denouncing what they portrayed as a possible "conspiracy" to derail wolf reintroduction in the Southwest. Their statements clearly appeared to blame opponents — particularly ranchers — for the shooting deaths of four transplanted wolves.

Now evidence has surfaced that multiple firearms were involved in the shootings, and the authorities are moving quickly to distance themselves from their own earlier allegations.

At least three guns were used to shoot four officially "endangered" Mexican gray wolves in Eastern Arizona, investigators say.

The feds are still cagey, however, using evasive and lawyerly terms that would make a White House attorney proud.

"Different caliber bullets were used," says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Megan Durham in Washington. "We are not focusing on any individual as a suspect at this point."

Another USFWS spokesman is more precise — but not too precise.

"More than two is correct," says Hans Stuart, "more than two different calibers."

So it's three, then. Or could it be four?

Stuart's assessment leaves that question hanging, but he does appear to be backing away from the agency's earlier claim of a "conspiracy" to "sabotage" the reintroduction scheme.

"We don't know if it was a conspiracy," Stuart has told the Associated Press. "We don't have evidence showing that."

The "sabotage" angle was first put forward by Stuart's colleague, F&WS Southwest Regional Director Nancy Kaufman, who said the shootings appeared to be "an attempt to sabotage wolf recovery."

Friday, after the multiple gun evidence surfaced, Stuart told AP that Kaufman was out of the office and couldn't be reached in regard to reassessing her earlier charge.

However, he offered in her defense, "The fact that we have four wolves shot since August, the cumulative effect looks like sabotage."

A federal grand jury in Albuquerque and at least a dozen federal agents in the field so far have found nothing to link the shootings to each other.

Meanwhile, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agents are following up more than 100 leads that have poured in since wolves began dying, the agency says. The wolves were raised in captivity and released the end of March near the New Mexico-Arizona state line.

"We're vigorously pursuing the investigation," says Tom Bauer, an agency spokesman in Albuquerque. "We're following up on every lead. We're not going to give up until we find some likely suspects."

The lack of similarities among the wolf killings appears to reduce the probability that an organized effort is behind them, points out a representative of the livestock industry.

"This clearly indicates this is not a single individual, which is kind of what we thought all along," says New Mexico Cattle Growers Association Executive Secretary Caren Cowan. "It probably dispels the theory that this is a conspiracy, or that this is sabotage. We're glad the Fish and Wildlife Service has been forthcoming with this, finally."

An environmental activist insists the number of guns used to shoot the wolves is unimportant.

"I wouldn't expect it to be one gun," says Kieran Suckling, director of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity. "People are up there murdering wolves on purpose. I don't know if it's one killer or four, and I don't really care. I just want the killing to stop."

The Fish and Wildlife Service would not say how many bullets it has recovered or whether similar guns were used in any two of the shootings, according to Mike Taugher of the Albuquerque Journal.

Officials would say only that the same gun was not used in all four, Taugher says. They refused to provide other specifics.

Taugher says they also noted that there were no dog prints at any of the four sites of unsolved wolf shootings. Once again, they would not elaborate on that observation, nor on its relevance.

In November, a 6.5 mm Swedish Mauser rifle and three boxes of ammunition were seized at a Reserve, N.M. gun shop, and the owner of the shop told the Journal that a Fish and Wildlife Service agent informed him he was a suspect.

But the agency says the shop's owner, Jess Carey, is not a suspect. The agency also denied ever telling Carey he was.

"We believe the ammunition might have come from his shop," Bauer says simply.

Carey remains adamant that a wildlife agent told him he was looking for information at the gun shop and that Carey was also considered a suspect.

"I think he was trying to scare me into giving him additional information," Carey says.

The 11 Mexican wolves released in March were the first to roam the mountains in 50 years. Until the release, the subspecies of gray wolf was living solely in captivity.

Five wolves have since been shot, the first by an Arizona camper, Richard Humphreys, who says the animal was threatening him. The four other shootings remain unsolved. All of the remaining wolves have either died or been recaptured, though the agency has announced plans to turn more wolves loose in coming months, and has already moved some to the "acclimation" pens used prior to release.

It is a violation of the Endangered Species Act to shoot Mexican wolves or any other "endangered" species except to protect human life.

Environmental activist groups have joined the federal government in offering a bounty for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of those who shot the wolves. Some of the activists are also demanding the re-opening of the case against Humphreys and his prosecution.

Special accommodations have been made to allow ranchers to shoot reintroduced wolves to protect livestock under certain circumstances. However, no rancher so far has shot a wolf under those provisions and there is no record yet of any livestock being killed by the wolves, though there are reports of several pets being attacked and, in one instance, killed by wolves.

Speculation about what is behind the wolf deaths includes an organized conspiracy, a series of unrelated potshots taken by wolf reintroduction opponents, or honest errors by hunters who mistook wolves for coyotes.

The possibility that the shootings were a series of mistakes by hunters is pretty plausible, says John Phelps, a predator and fur-bearer biologist with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish.

Phelps says 33,500 coyotes are shot every year in Arizona and, of that number, roughly 500 or so are shot in the area of the wolf reintroduction.

"There is not a hunter in the Southwest that has ever seen a wolf," Phelps says. "All they've ever seen is a coyote."

But Dan Brooks, the assistant chief of law enforcement for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, says such mistakes would not be innocent.

"A hunter has a responsibility of being sure of his target," Brooks says. "When I hear people say, 'I didn't know what it was,' I say, 'Well, why did you shoot it?'"

That attitude and the proven hard line that federal agencies have taken in "endangered species" shooting incidents make it unlikely that anyone will come forward and admit to killing a wolf by mistake.

After all, Montana rancher John Schuler has only recently succeeded — after a quarter of a million dollars in as-yet unpaid legal bills — in extricating himself from a decade-long web of prosecution and persecution for shooting an attacking grizzly bear in self-defense in his own yard.