U.S. Forest Service officials plan to shoot wild cattle in New Mexico from helicopters beginning next week to address threats to the environment and visitors.
The operation is scheduled to begin Feb. 23 and last through next weekend, with the area targeted, essentially the Gila Wilderness Ranger District in the Gila National Forest, to be closed Feb. 20 through Feb. 26, Forest Service officials said Thursday.
An estimated 150 wild cattle roam the lush federal lands of western New Mexico, home to mountain peaks and deep canyons. The carcasses will be allowed to decompose, the officials said.
Forest Service staff will be tasked with ensuring downed cattle will not foul waterways or block trails, according to a Gila National Forest statement.
Forest officials have said predators on land (wolves) and from the sky (some birds) will pick the remains clean, as they’ve done before. And they’ve dismissed arguments that such easy feasting will draw wolves closer to ranches and thus present another danger to humans, saying there’s little evidence this has taken place in the past.
Some ranchers in the area have criticized the plan as inhumane and wasteful, while some environmentalists have endorsed the aerial killing as needed to preserve the area’s environment.
Forest Service officials have long argued the cattle, descended from ranch bovine abandoned by bankrupt ranchers in the area in the 1970s, trample environmentally sensitive grounds, aid erosion, foul waters with their waste, and could carry with them disease and the potential to attack park visitors.
Efforts to round up the cattle have been largely inefficient and unsuccessful, particularly given the area’s foreboding terrain and divergent elevation, they’ve said.
“These unowned feral cattle need to be removed because they are incompatible with the environment, they are destructive, pestilent, offensive (obnoxious) and injurious (inflicting injury) to man and forest resources,” Gila National Forest biologist Jerry Monzingo…
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