In New Mexico, some children wait for the bus in chicken coop-like wooden structures. These "kid cages" are meant to protect them from wolves, but some are skeptical.
New Mexico wolves have been a hot topic since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Endangered Species Act protection for 75 of the animals in the U.S. west. If passed, the act would make it illegal to kill the wolves, National Geographic reported.
Some conservative groups worry the wolves are a danger to children and livestock alike, but no wolf attacks have been documented in Arizona or New Mexico. Some say the cages are unnecessary.
"They're designed so children can step up in them and sit down and wait for the bus," Catron County Sheriff Shawn Menges told FoxNews.com. "What happens out here in these rural areas is that most of the time, the parents are going to sit and wait with the children [for the bus] in their vehicle, but that's not always true."
Menges said earlier this year a wolf got too close to a mother and her son near a bus stop.
"She saw the wolf and tried to make it leave, but it didn't," Menges said. "It moved toward her instead."
Eva Sargent, director of Southwest programs for Defenders of Wildlife, believes the cages are unnecessary, and are related to "anti-government" fear.
"There's been absolutely zero, nada, zilch attacks on humans by wolves in the Southwest, so I think these cages are a reaction to a non-problem," Sargent said. "For some people, it's a political ploy to bring attention to other things. A lot of the fear stirred up by these kid cages, at the base of it, is an anti-government fear and the wolves are standing in for that."
Over the past 40 years there have only been three wolf attacks on humans reported in North America, none of these attacks were from Mexican gray wolves, which are the species in question. The attacks took place in Canada and Alaska.
"The thing you have to balance is the small number of wolves with the need to recover wolves," Sargent said.
