Schneberger admitted that her Husband Killed an Animal Protected under the ESL. It is time to get our Research into Court People and begin protecting Our Children’s Resources while we still have them left. Heaven forbid they associate missing calves with cattle rustlers.
Several calves vanished last year from Laura Schneberger’s ranch in the Gila National Forest in Sierra County, New Mexico. She never saw them again.
Authorities couldn’t investigate what happened to them without carcasses, but Schneberger suspects endangered Mexican gray wolves killed them.
She said a fire crew saw a wolf near her cattle and that a U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services official told her one had been in the area.
She filed a claim with the department’s Farm Service Agency, she said. The department has funds to pay ranchers whose livestock have been attacked by Mexican gray wolves. But Schneberger is not optimistic the claim will go her way.
It wasn’t the first time she had a run-in with Mexican gray wolves on the ranch. In 2013, her husband shot and killed one as it attacked their cattle, she said.
Other ranchers in the area have had far more wolf encounters, she said.
“There’s people that have just lost a ton (of cattle),” said Schneberger, who is also the president of the Gila National Forest Permittees Association. She and other ranchers nearby have permits to graze cattle over portions of the 3.3 million-acre forest.
They pay to use the land. They also share it with endangered species federal officials introduce onto the same range.
Source: Mexican gray wolves: Ranchers want fewer. Environmentalists want more.