Ranchers support removing Endangered Species Act protections for Mexican wolves
Tom Peterson with the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association says taxpayers are “unfortunate casualties” of this overlay now that the Mexican wolf population is stable under ESA guidelines.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are weighing a proposal that would remove Mexican wolves from the Endangered Species Act. Industry groups are backing the bill, with one expert saying federal restrictions have created major challenges for livestock producers.
“For the last 25 years, my neighbors and I have seen the worst kind of impacts from a federal policy,” said Tom Paterson, president-elect of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. “Here is the Endangered Species Act that treats local people as acceptable sacrifices for a national initiative to recover an apex predator for two and a half decades.”
Peterson says this outlay comes despite the Mexican wolf population being stable enough that it should no longer be a protected species.
“We have been unfortunate and unacceptable casualties in this,” Peterson said. “This is a story to recover Mexican wolves. Taxpayers have shared our misery. Mexican wolf recovery has cost taxpayers nearly $260,000 for each wolf now on the ground. That’s more than a quarter of a million dollars. Each recovery cost taxpayers more than $15 million over the past three years alone.”
The number of wolves now on the ground meets the number identified in the ESA recovery plan.
Since the Tennessee Main Street program’s inception in 2010, 78 rural commercial districts have been improved. These 12 new additions bring that total number up to 90.
What can these facilities do to protect themselves? I wrote about this issue last spring, and since that time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has issued a significant opinion. That makes an update in order.
Updated Dicamba information is the topic of today’s Firm to Farm blog post by RFD-TV’s agri-legal expert Roger McEowen with the Washburn School of Law.
In part seven of his blog series,"Top 10 Developments in Ag Law and Tax in 2023,” agri-legal expert Roger McEowen covers the #1 issues, SCOTUS and defining a “Water of the United States.”
In part six of his blog series,"Top 10 Developments in Ag Law and Tax in 2023,” farm legal expert Roger McEowen tackles issue #2, foreign ownership of ag land.
In part five of his blog series, “Top 10 Developments in Ag Law and Tax in 2023,” Roger McEowen tackles issue number three, California’s Prop 12 pork regulations.
