The White Mountains: Bring your skis, your hiking boots -- and your favorite handgun

September 3, 2006

By Lif Strand, Research Associate

Southwest Center for Resource Analysis

Western New Mexico University

Apache County, Arizona – The White Mountains are well known to outdoor lovers as a vacation destination of choice. They are a relatively quick drive from the greater Phoenix area, and packing is easy, since living up here is mostly informal. These days, however, some folks recommend you pack a weapon as well as sports gear when you come to the White Mountains -- and that you know how to use that weapon.

The danger? Not from other humans, but from wolves.

Cassie Joy and her daughters Brittaney Joy and Dustie Harper live with their families in one of the most beautiful and pristine Ponderosa pine forests in existence, in “The Blue,” south of Alpine. The extended Joy family has lived here for 16 years, training horses for hunting, outfitting, showing and pleasure riding. It’s not a big operation -- they generally don't produce more than one foal per year -- but they have quite a few horses on their ranch, which is also a private fish hatchery. It’s the kind of life that vacationers to the White Mountains dream of.

That dream is close to a nightmare for Joy and her family and for others who have the misfortune to live in and near the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area.

“A few years back Dustie and I went to Clifton, and came home up the Coronado trail,” Joy recalls. “At Beaverhead, we saw a wolf running across a field. It was so big! We looked to the right and saw another.

“We felt safe in our vehicle looking at just one wolf, but suddenly there were five surrounding the car,” Joy says. “We didn't feel safe any more -- they weren't afraid of us at all. That’s the scariest part of them -- they aren't afraid of people.”

The Blue Range Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project is a strange concept, dreamed up and managed by people who do not themselves have to experience the results. The project is administered by six co-lead agencies: Arizona Game and Fish Department, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, White Mountain Apache Tribe, USDA Wildlife Services, USDA Forest Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The committee management approach supposedly provides opportunities for participation by local governments, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals from all segments of the public, but in practice local governments and the public, particularly those who live within the project’s boundaries, have little say in what goes on with the project. These are the people who bear the burden of the effects of living in proximity to predatory animals that have little to no fear of humans.

“It’s changed our lives so much,” Joy says. “We love to go riding and hiking. Before the wolves were here, we didn't take guns with us. We could go off into the forest and just relax and have a good time.”

“Now we take pistols to scare off the wolves,” she says. “You're always nervous, knowing there are wolves there. We have radios, we're always checking up on each other.”

Joy’s daughter Brittaney, in her late teens, has for several years been carrying a gun at her waist whenever she goes outdoors. She has seen wolves herself, one fighting with her dog right on her mother’s back doorstep. She has seen how wolves don't run away when you yell at them or try to chase them off -- or even shoot a round over their heads.

“I thought when I opened the door that the wolf would follow the dogs right in,” Brittaney says.

All along the Blue River children are learning to grow up afraid. They are packing weapons, just as people did a hundred and fifty years ago.

In next-door Catron County, New Mexico, the local government has created a county position for investigating wolf incidents. Jess Carey has been on the job for several months and is overworked, not only confirming livestock predation, but gathering data on other incidents which, to date, the wolf project does not bother with.

“Wolves do not have to bite to cause damage,” Carey says. “There is also psychological trauma which is being documented, the result of things like a child witnessing a family pet gutted and killed by a wolf on the front porch, or farm animals killed by wolves that won't be scared off. We’re seeing nightmares, sleeplessness, children afraid to go out of their homes to play, afraid walk from their house to the bus stop to go to school.”

“The shameful thing is,” Carey says, “it appears that the Fish and Wildlife Service wolf recovery people do not care about the rural children and families that are damaged and suffering because of this program. The lack of concern on their part is unbelievable and as of today they still have not put any protection for our children in their five year review of the Mexican wolf program.”

“Looking into these small children’s eyes, they seemed to ask me ‘make the boogey monster not come to our house anymore’," Carey says.

The Joys have experienced their own wolf boogey monsters. They have a “souvenir” from one of the several wolf attacks on their dogs: A fang that was actually embedded in the dog’s skull. The tooth was positively identified as having come from a wolf by the project investigator who examined the incident, and who asked to keep the tooth. The Joys have declined to part with it -- it is a grim testament to what they have been going through.

Not feeling safe in one’s own home or on their own property is a common complaint from residents who live in the wolf recovery area. The Joys, as so many others, not only carry guns during the day, but at night keep a gun within reach of their beds.

“When the wolves are along the river, they're here every night,” Joy says. “You don't sleep. You've got the lights on and you're up every time the dogs bark.”

“We know if the dogs are outside they're in danger, but we can't bring them in,” Joy says. “We need the dogs to warn us about the wolves because of the danger to the horses. But leaving the dogs out there puts them in danger -- so it makes it hard to know what to do. A lot of nights we lock up all the horses, turn on all the outside floodlights and I sleep with a gun next to our bed.”

“Mexican wolves are human raised, human released; even though they are human adverse-conditioned, they still have a ‘no fear’ response to humans," Carey says. “Habituated wolves enter your private property and stand there and look at you.”

“If a parent shoots a wolf to protect a child, they are looking at potential time in jail and a $100,000.00 fine,” Carey says. “This has been branded into each person’s brain throughout the wolf recovery area by US Fish and Wildlife Service personnel. The wolf has to bite a child to meet the directive of protecting one’s life before a wolf can be killed justifiably.”

“If a person points a gun at you, you legally can shoot that person to protect your life; it’s called self defense,” he says. “But an eighty pound wolf near your child on your own private property is not considered self defense of your family. Do you find this odd?”

“It makes me nervous about my little girl,” Dustie Harper says of her three-year-old daughter. “I can't let my little girl play outside any more knowing that wolves come up on my doorstep.”

“Ever since the wolves have come in and attacked my dogs I don't sleep well,” Brittaney Joy says. “Wolves will come right in, they aren't scared. They'll kill your dogs. It isn't ‘Oh, what a pretty little wolf’ -- they're not nice animals. Tell people, if they come to visit the White Mountains, to bring a weapon.”

For information about this article, contact:

Lif Strand lif.strand@gmail.com or 505-773-4897

Dr. Alex Thal thala@email.wnmu.edu or 505-538-6312