Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday ordered a temporary ban on trapping on the New Mexico side of an area where Mexican gray wolves have been reintroduced into the wild along the New Mexico-Arizona border.

Richardson ordered the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish to prohibit trapping for six months while it studies what risk traps and snares pose to wolves.

A federal effort to reintroduce the endangered subspecies of the gray wolf into the Southwest began in 1998.

Biologists had predicted a self-sustaining wild population of 100 wolves by now, but the latest count at the end of 2009 found 42. Three have been found dead since June, two of them shot.

The program has been plagued by illegal shootings, complaints from ranchers who have lost cattle to wolves and environmentalists who criticize the way the federal government has managed the program.

Richardson's executive order noted traps do not differentiate between wolves and the animals for which traps were set.

His order said there have been six confirmed and three probable Mexican gray wolves trapped in New Mexico's portion of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area in the past eight years. Five wolves were injured by the traps, two severely enough to require leg amputations.

Injuries can harm wolves' ability to catch prey and could increase the risk of wolves preying on livestock instead of faster elk and deer, the order said.

Conservationists applauded the ban.

WildEarth Guardians, the Sierra Club and Southwest Environmental Center petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service last month for an emergency halt to trapping and snaring in the recovery area.

Richardson's action "is a cue for the feds to step up and to provide maximum protections for this critically endangered animal," said Wendy Keefover-Ring, director of carnivore programs for WildEarth Guardians.

"This is a really exciting moment," she said.

Sandy Buffett, vice chairman of the state Game Commission and executive director of Conservation Voters New Mexico, said the ban will give the commission and the Department of Game and Fish "additional data necessary to assess the long-term biological impacts of trapping on wolf recovery."




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