On the range

For her latest assignment, Kim Henderson traveled to southern New Mexico, a wild part of the country filled with beauty and danger. You can read her story about the clash between cattle ranchers and Mexican wolves in “Big & Bad” in this issue. When she got back, I asked Kim to describe what life there is like.

How remote is this place? It’s a four-hour drive from the Albuquerque airport, so that tells you a little something. Several people told me I was going to the most frontier-ish part of the United States. My final destination was Luna—population 67. But the beauty there is unbelievable. You’ve got the desert scenes, and then you have forested mountain scenes, and then you’ve got the little Western town that looked like something straight out of a John Wayne movie. So it’s really magical, but it takes rugged people to live there.

What makes life so hard? Mostly it’s the isolation. It’s two hours to any sizable grocery store. And there’s one local spot where all the Amazon packages get delivered. People have to come pick them up. Some of the kids have to drive an hour and a half to school, each way. It’s just a totally different way of life.

How long have these ranchers lived and worked in this area? Some as long as five generations.

But it’s a financially precarious existence, right? One woman I talked to told me about a man in her church who had spent his whole life ranching. He lost $150,000 worth of calves over three seasons, and that was enough to put him out of business. And the ranchers would say this is not a problem their grandparents dealt with. That’s something I heard a lot, too. This is a totally new issue for them.

In your story you talk about how the reintroduction of Mexican wolves has changed daily life. Can you share an example you didn’t include in your story? Rancher Audrey McQueen has a teenage daughter who had raised a prize mare. Rodeo competitions are a pretty big deal for young people in this part of the world. After they’ve been trained for a few years, the horses can be worth as much as $30,000. But they’re also prey to the wolves. One day, Audrey had to break the news to her daughter that wolves had killed her horse. It’s not like that animal can be easily replaced.

When you got home, you had an experience that connected with the story. What happened? I went on a walk, and a young coyote popped out in front of me. I’ve never seen that before, but I was so scared of him. It made me sympathize with people who are afraid of coming across these wolves. As they increase, they’re entering towns, coming into people’s yards, snatching pets. People are afraid to put their children out in the yard to play, like they’ve been doing all these years. It’s just a question of whose right to freedom is going to prevail here—man or beast?