Mexican Wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Since before New Mexico was a state, Catron County has been fighting against federal authority, resisting commonsense efforts to rein in logging- and grazing-based destruction, and insisting instead on self-governance and ecological ruin. The county encompasses nearly 7,000 square miles of forests and grasslands, rivers, archeological sites, unique geological formations and designated Wilderness. It’s largely unpopulated with just 3600 people, but they have loomed large on the western landscape for their anti-federal, county-supremacy positions and hostility to environmental regulation.
The latest example of this form of “governance” is the Catron County Commission passing a resolution asking the New Mexico governor to declare a state of emergency over the “natural disaster” of Mexican gray wolf reintroduction. A few squeaky-wheel ranchers have somehow convinced local residents to ignore the crushing poverty, high unemployment rate, the higher-than-average number of suicides, expensive housing, and percentage of high-school drop-outs, and instead blame their problems on the Big, Bad Wolf.
Mexican wolves are actually not that big – maxing out around 80 lbs for males – or bad at all: there is no case of a Mexican wolf ever harming a human. Not once, ever, in recorded history. Most of the approximately 280 wolves in the wild distributed between Arizona and New Mexico don’t even prey on livestock, but you wouldn’t know that from the horror stories shared on social media and at the April 3, 2025 commission meeting. Depredation rates have been going down overall, coinciding with an uptick in proactive coexistence measures like range-riding and the reformed standards being used to determine wolf involvement in livestock deaths, but being proactive and responsible for their livestock isn’t the solution these folks are after. They want the species defunded, delisted, and subject to “management” directed by the business end of a rifle.
Catron County has opposed Mexican wolf recovery from the outset. When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed its first Recovery Plan for the Mexican wolf in 1982, the county opposed it based on concerns it would decimate the livestock industry. In 1992 the County Commission passed ordinance 002-92, forbidding the release of Mexican wolves anywhere in the county; this was superseded by Ordinance 002-2002 ten years later, specifying fines of hundreds of dollars and up to three months’ jail time for anyone (presumably including federal and state officials) releasing predators within the county. By 2007 the county was building bus-stop cages to “protect” schoolchildren from Mexican wolves and passing ordinances to allow itself to trap or kill this federally-protected species, the Endangered Species Act notwithstanding. (This was overturned in court.)
It isn’t just the wolves, but a generalized hostility to the role of the federal and state government in regulating regional activities. Catron County’s 1992 land-use plan’s introduction says: “Federal and state agents threaten the life, liberty, and happiness of the people of Catron County. They present a clear and present danger to the land and livelihood of every man, woman, and child. A state of emergency prevails that calls for devotion and sacrifice.” The plan was revised in 2007 and updated to say, “Maintaining the custom and culture of the County is critical for community and economic stability. This stability is highly dependent on the right of Catron County citizens to pursue and protect their way of life and economic structures from outside forces such as federal and state regulations.” In 1994, the county commission passed an ordinance urging every county resident to own a gun, and County Commissioner Carl Livingston was quoted as saying, “We want the Forest Service to know we’re prepared, even though violence would be a last resort.”
The April 2, 2025 resolution accuses the government of lying about the extent of wolf predation on livestock, and the reintroduction project of threatening the State and Country’s food supply “and thus our national security.” Neither of these things are true: Mexican wolves mostly eat elk, and Americans mostly eat beef raised in places other than the arid public lands of the west. But the facts haven’t stopped the fear-mongering, and the public testimony of the anti-wolf crowd hasn’t changed much since 2007, despite the reality that no kids have been harmed by wolves, the livestock industry hasn’t collapsed, and the bus shelters sit like unused props in a state of disrepair.
Catron County’s acting is as transparent as it ever was, but the difference now is they might have a friendly ear in the Trump Administration. From Brian Nesvik at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to Karen Budd-Falen at the Department of Interior (who helped draft Catron County’s 1992 land use plan), to Donald Trump Jr., the radical views of anti-wolf ranchers are reaching high places. For this brand of political theater, Catron County may have finally found its audience.
Mexican Wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
