MONTANA

State curbs wolf hunt after 23 from Yellowstone killed

BILLINGS – Montana wildlife commissioners on Jan. 28 moved to shut down gray wolf hunting in a portion of the state around Yellowstone National Park, amid mounting criticism over a record number of the animals shot or trapped after roaming across the park boundary this winter.

But commissioners rejected calls to revive quotas that would limit the number of wolves killed along Yellowstone’s northern border to just a few annually. Those longstanding quotas were lifted last year after Republican lawmakers passed laws intended to drive down the wolf population by making it easier to kill the animals.

Yellowstone officials had pressed the state beginning in mid-December to suspend hunting in some areas along the park’s border. They said the deaths marked a significant setback for the long-term viability of Yellowstone’s renowned wolf packs.

Under the unanimous commission vote, hunting and trapping for wolves in southwestern Montana will be barred once the number killed in the region hits 82 animals. So far 76 have been reported killed in that area.

Twenty-three wolves from park packs have been killed so far this winter – 18 in Montana, three in Wyoming and two in Idaho, according to Yellowstone officials. That’s the most in a season since the predators were restored to the U.S. northern Rocky Mountains more than 25 years ago after being widely decimated last century.

The park is now down to 91 wolves, spokesperson Morgan Warthin said.

Urged by ranchers and hunters who want fewer wolves, Republican lawmakers in Montana and Idaho last year loosened hunting and trapping laws to allow night hunting, higher harvest limits, the use of snares and even aerial hunting in Idaho. Montana also eliminated the longstanding quotas.

Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly told wildlife commissioners in a letter released on Jan. 28 that park wolves spend only 5 % of their time outside the park. In the last three years, Sholly wrote, there’s been only one attack on livestock by wolves in Park County, Montana, just north of the Yellowstone. Such attacks are frequently cited by ranchers who want to reduce wolf numbers.

NEW MEXICO

Governor teaches amid school staffing crisis

SANTA FE – New Mexico’s governor volunteered as a substitute teacher in a local public school on Jan. 26 after announcing a program the previous week that would allow state workers and soldiers to help cover for teachers amid a shortage worsened by a spike in coronavirus cases.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she spent several hours teaching a kindergarten class at Salazar Elementary School in Santa Fe with the help of a teaching assistant.

She added that she supports efforts by the legislature to increase salaries for licensed teachers by as much as 20%. Other workers like teaching assistants would get a 7% raise.

A teacher raise bill with similar provisions was approved unanimously earlier in the day in a vote by the state Senate Education Committee.

National Guard soldiers are also volunteering as part of the program, with soldiers beginning to substitute this week in Hobbs and other cities around the state.

State may tax tickets to space on Virgin Galactic

LAS CRUCES – Pity the poor space flight passenger: Flying up up and away from Earth could get even more expensive as New Mexico lawmakers consider taxing the tickets on Virgin Galactic.

A bipartisan bill introduced in the state legislature seeks to close a loophole that excluded spaceflight passenger tickets from gross receipts taxes. The move aims to harvest revenue from ticket sales as Virgin Galactic prepares for regular commercial service from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic told investors last fall it had about 700 reservations for flights. With a ticket price of $450,000, the tax would be at least $31,000, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.

Virgin Galactic said it was aware of the proposed legislation and would continue working with the state “on policies that support our combined goal of growing aerospace in New Mexico.”

New Mexico taxpayers have invested millions for the construction and operation of the spaceport, for which the state has been promised returns in the form of high-paying aerospace jobs, related economic development and tourism.

“When those exemptions were drafted, it was not in anyone’s mind that people would be a payload,” said Republican Rep. Jason Harper of Rio Rancho, who is co-sponsoring the bill.

Indigenous woman to lead Smithsonian American Indian museum

ALBUQUERQUE – An Indigenous New Mexico woman has been named to lead the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Cynthia Chavez Lamar will be the first Native American woman to serve as the museum’s director when she takes over on Feb. 14. She’s currently the acting associate director for collections and operations.

An enrolled member at San Felipe Pueblo, Chavez Lamar is an accomplished curator, author and scholar whose research has focused on Southwest Native art. Early in her career, she was a museum intern and later an associate curator from 2000 to 2005.

Chavez Lamar, whose ancestry also includes Hopi, Tewa and Navajo, will oversee the museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the museum’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York and the Cultural Resources Center in Maryland, which houses the museum’s collections and its curatorial and repatriation offices.

The museum has one of the largest and most extensive collections of Native and Indigenous items in the world. It includes more than 1 million objects and photographs and more than 500,000 digitized images, films and other media documenting Native American communities, events and organizations.

OKLAHOMA

‘Tiger King’ resentenced to 21 years in prison

OKLAHOMA CITY – A federal judge resentenced “Tiger King” Joe Exotic to 21 years in prison on Jan. 28, reducing his punishment on a murder-for-hire charge by just a year despite pleas from the former zookeeper for leniency as he begins treatment for early-stage cancer.

Joe Exotic – whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage – was convicted in a case involving animal welfare activist Carole Baskin. Both were featured in Netflix’s “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.”

Baskin and her husband, Howard Baskin, also attended the proceedings, and she said she was fearful that Maldonado-Passage, 58, could threaten her.

Baskin said even with Maldonado-Passage in prison, she has continued to receive “vile, abusive and threatening communications” over the last two years. She told the judge she believes Maldonado-Passage poses an even more serious threat to her now that he has a larger group of supporters because of the popularity of the Netflix series.

Maldonado-Passage’s attorneys told the judge their client is suffering from stage-one prostate cancer, along with a disease that compromises his immune system, making him particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

The Jan. 28 court proceedings came about after a federal appeals court ruled last year that the prison term he’s serving on a murder-for-hire conviction should be shortened.

The former zookeeper was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison after he was convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill Baskin. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated them as one conviction at sentencing because they both involved the same goal of killing Baskin, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida and had criticized Maldonado-Passage’s treatment of animals.

Maldonado-Passage, who maintains his innocence, also was convicted of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.