courtesy of Mother Jones
by Kiera Butler
Can livestock owners—and their cows—learn to live with the lobos?
“One warm evening early last summer, I found myself in New Mexico’s Gila wilderness at Bucky’s BBQ Bash. Beyond celebrating the birthday of Bucky Allred, garrulous owner of the Blue Front Bar and Café (one of two bars in tiny Glenwood), the annual shindig has a higher purpose: raising money to help ranchers get rid of wolves.”
“On the surface, the ranchers seem to harbor undue anger over a few dozen limping lobos. But the wolves symbolize something bigger: a century-old debate over whether land is meant to be used by humans or preserved as wilderness. Roughly 170 ranchers live within the recovery area, many of them descended from pioneers who homesteaded the area in the 1800s.”
Teklanika Nature Photography 