For Immediate Release, July 25, 2024

Contacts:

Chris Smith, WildEarth Guardians, (505) 395-6177, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Claire Musser, Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project, (928) 202-1325, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Cyndi Tuell, Western Watersheds Project, (520) 272-2454, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Regan Downey, Wolf Conservation Center, (914) 763-2373, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Sally Paez, New Mexico Wild, (505) 350-0664, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Michael Robinson, Center for Biological Diversity, (575) 313-7017, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Asha denied freedom for failure to breed

The young female Mexican wolf captured the imagination of New Mexicans with her travels

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that Asha, the young female Mexican wolf who twice traveled into northern New Mexico, would not be released back into the wild this year. 

Since December 2023, the last time Asha was taken from near the Valles Caldera National Preserve in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, she has been held in a facility near Socorro. Prior to this announcement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had approved Asha’s release “on the condition of successful breeding and producing pups.” 

“Asha deserves to be free and wild. She has done nothing wrong–she has followed her instincts into suitable wolf habitat in northern New Mexico and is being punished for it,” said Chris Smith, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. “Asha belongs in the wild whether she breeds or not; there are some pretty telling layers to this.”

“We need to let lobos lead, respect their sentience, and learn from Asha and her family,” said Claire Musser, executive director of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project. “The Caldera pack should be free to live their own lives and make their own choices. We should embrace the opportunity to make new scientific discoveries by allowing wolves to teach us, rather than continuing to disrupt and control their lives.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to keep Asha in captivity, rather than release her along with her male partner, Arcadia, is consistent with the state wildlife agency's long-held opposition to releasing almost any captive-born wolves except for young pups removed from their parents, who have been released since 2016 but with a high disappearance rate.

“This wolf, and others like her, are showing us where the wolves want to be. The human-created maps, with imaginary lines on the ground where wolves are not allowed, ignores what science tells us – that the southern Rocky Mountains are home to the Mexican gray wolf,” said Cyndi Tuell, Western Watersheds Project’s Arizona and New Mexico director.  “Making Asha’s freedom dependent on her ability to breed represents an outdated and unscientific philosophy held by wildlife managers that needs to change.”

“Asha’s value to her species isn’t solely as a breeder – she’s an experienced wild wolf with important knowledge and traditions to share with other wolves. Depriving her of the wild is also depriving wild lobos of her keen instincts, and is yet another setback on the path to true recovery,” said Regan Downey, director of education of the Wolf Conservation Center.

“The wild lands of northern New Mexico are incomplete without lobos,” said Sally Paez, staff attorney for New Mexico Wild. “It’s time for wildlife managers to use their authority to support the natural dispersal of Mexican wolves into suitable landscapes such as Valles Caldera and the Jemez Mountains to restore balance to our treasured public lands and ecosystems.” 

“It’s achingly clear that Asha and her mate could contribute to wolf recovery if only the government would allow it,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Keeping them behind wire mesh for another year shows how politics are prioritized over wolf releases, as well as the livestock industry’s success at blocking wolves north of Interstate 40. Both have contributed to alarming declines in the genetic diversity of Mexican wolves since the early days of reintroduction.”

Asha is one of several wolves who have made headlines recently by repeatedly dispersing north of Interstate 40. Anubis, a male lobo, made two journeys to the Flagstaff area in Arizona before being killed in January 2022. One of two wolves currently north of Interstate 40 in Arizona has been captured and collared in an attempt to capture the second wolf so they can be relocated. 

Conservation groups say the arbitrary Interstate 40 boundary beyond which wolves cannot go is the result of state pressure to restrict the recovery of Mexican wolves to a limited portion of the Southwest. But leading scientists have suggested that three interconnected subpopulations of at least 200 wolves each need to be present in the Southwest to achieve recovery. The southern Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon Ecoregion represent excellent opportunities for two new subpopulations, along with the existing population of roughly 260 lobos in the Greater Gila Bioregion.

“Her value does not depend on whether she can breed,” said Smith. “She is a wild wolf who has proven she can take care of herself in the wild, and should be allowed to do so.”

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For immediate release July 18, 2024

Media contacts: 

Claire Musser, Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project (928) 202 1325 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Chris Smith, WildEarth Guardians, (505) 395-6177, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Greta Anderson, Western Watersheds Project, (520) 623-1878, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Wildlife advocates celebrate wolf dispersal, decry capture of female lobo

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Arizona Game and Fish Department are using female to bait and capture her possible mate near Flagstaff

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Mexican gray wolf advocates are celebrating the good news of a wild wolf pair near Flagstaff, and are asking the agencies to let them continue to roam freely in the Grand Canyon ecoregion.  

The Arizona Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that they have caught and collared a female wolf with the intention of using her as bait to also capture her packmate and relocate them both back south of the arbitrary project boundary of Interstate 40. 

“If we let our dispersing wolves live their own lives, we could learn much about wolves and habitat connectivity. These wolves show us their needs, and our agencies must listen. I haven't received calls about wolves near Flagstaff, so I assume they lived peacefully, like Anubis, a Mexican wolf tragically shot in 2022,” said Claire Musser, Executive Director of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project. “We should let these wolves roam instead of capturing them. Agencies need to invest in supporting our dispersing wolves and change our social landscape so wolves can restore the Grand Canyon region's ecological health.”

“We’re thrilled that these wolves are doing exactly what wolves have done for millenia – disperse to suitable habitat, find mates, and occupy new territories,” said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project. “What’s unnatural is the agencies’ intention to use the new collar data to relocate the wolves south of their artificial boundary of Interstate 40.” 

“The inconsistency with which these agencies treat roaming wolves is so telling,” said Chris Smith, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. “In New Mexico, they captured an ‘out of bounds’ wolf because they said she wouldn’t find a mate. Now they’re using this wolf as bait to capture her possible mate and relocate them both. It’s astoundingly unscientific and heavy-handed management.”

The Mexican gray wolf advocates are asking the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department to let the wolves stay where they are and to educate the public about the protection these wolves have under the Endangered Species Act. These wolves are fully protected and cannot be harassed or hunted.

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For Immediate Release May 31, 2024

MEDIA CONTACTS

Michael Robinson, Center for Biological Diversity (575) 313-7017, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Claire Musser, Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project, (928) 202-1325, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Conservationists hope for released pups to survive in face of worsening genetic crisis

Albuquerque, NM – Advocates hope that 27 endangered Mexican gray wolf pups fostered into wild dens in Arizona and New Mexico will add genetic diversity to the population. However, concerns remain that more must be done to save this unique southwestern subspecies of the gray wolf. 

“I hope all these little wolves survive and flourish, but it’s troubling that they weren’t released with their parents,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “So many pups released this way in past years simply disappeared, so I’m not optimistic. It’s such a shame that the government didn’t release wolf packs, which would provide a much better chance of survival without separating families.”

Advocates are wishing the best for all the pups and their new adoptive families as they celebrate the boost to the Mexican wolf population. However, it isn’t just about numbers. The over-reliance on fostering is resulting in a rapidly closing window for genetic rescue of Mexican wolves as the population grows and it gets harder to increase gene diversity. Relying on cross fostering alone is taking too long to address the looming threat that inbreeding poses to the future of Mexican gray wolves.

Of the 99 captive-born wolf pups released to the wild without their parents in springtime from 2016 to 2023, just 24 were known to be alive in their first winter or thereafter, and just 18 survived to adulthood at age two. In contrast, three-quarters of the captive-born adult wolf pairs released with dependent pups in areas of adequate native prey and no other wolves where they were released, survived and successfully raised pups. The last release of a captive-born well-bonded wolf family was in 2006. Opposition to wolf family releases is counter to recovery science and is politically motivated, largely in deference to Arizona and New Mexico state wildlife agencies dominated by the livestock industry.

Pup fostering can aid wolf recovery, but the fostered pups have to survive and raise families of their own in the wild to contribute meaningfully to long-term conservation. While fostering has contributed a small amount to improving gene diversity in the wild population, it is not sufficient to address the genetic crisis. Wild Mexican gray wolves are still about as related to each other as full siblings.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service must act now to add the introduction of well-bonded families of wolves into the wild to address the genetic emergency; better aid recovery of Mexican wolves; and improve resilience, the ability to adapt in the face of a changing environment, and redundancy. Releases of well-bonded wolf families, parents with their pups, have proven to be successful and will immediately boost gene diversity, increase the number of breeding pairs, expand the distribution of lobos, and support the highly social nature of wolves. The intentional restoration of multiple wolf populations is a fail-safe against extinction. 

Meanwhile, human-caused mortality, artificial boundaries, and interference with wolves roaming freely in habitat of their choosing makes changing policy even more urgent. Claire Musser, the Executive Director of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project says, “we must allow our wolves to disperse to the ideal habitat north of I-40 freely. We have so much we can learn from our dispersing wolves, and if we are serious about Mexican wolf recovery we need to start working with wolves and not against them.” 

The collaborative foster efforts of the Mexican Wolf SAFE program, nonprofits like LightHawk Conservation, and biologists and technicians working on the ground should also be backed up by policy changes and robust commitment from state leadership in Arizona and New Mexico and federal leaders in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service to ensure lobos are protected wherever they may roam. Native carnivores like the Mexican gray wolf have an important role to play in the environment. Thriving wolf populations and healthy landscapes depend on the partnership demonstrated during pup fostering operations being amplified beyond pup season. 

Background

The Mexican gray wolf is the southernmost subspecies of gray wolf in North America, and the most endangered. Exterminated from the wild in the United States and Mexico, seven unrelated wolves were successfully bred in captivity after the Mexican wolf was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 1976. Reintroduction into Arizona and New Mexico began in 1998. The most recent annual census shows at least 257 Mexican gray wolves in the wild in the United States and fewer than 20 in Mexico, where reintroduction began in 2011.   

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For immediate release: April 30, 2024

MEDIA CONTACTS: 

Greta Anderson, Western Watersheds Project, (520) 623-1878; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

Chris Smith, WildEarth Guardians, (505) 395-6177, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Regan Downey, Wolf Conservation Center, (914) 763-2373; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Claire Musser, Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project (928) 202-1325;  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Greens applaud translocation of Mexican gray wolves to southeastern Arizona

DOUGLAS, Ariz. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s translocated a Mexican gray wolf family back to the wild in southeastern Arizona on Monday, a move conservation groups are celebrating as a successful step in lobo recovery. The wolves, a female called “Llave” (#1828) and her mate, “Wonder” (#2774) were both originally born in the wild in the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area. 

Both wolves were removed from the wild last fall with the intention that they would pair bond in captivity prior to translocation back in the home range on the border of New Mexico that Llave shared with her previous mate (#1582), who was killed in spring 2023. During the summer of 2023, she made several forays north of Interstate 10 but never found a male on her own, leading to her capture in the Peloncillo Mountains. Wonder was removed in November from the San Carlos Apache Reservation at the Tribe’s request. Both wolves spent the winter in captivity at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge near Albuquerque.    

“We couldn’t be happier that the Service put these wolves back in the wild of the Sky Islands where Mexican gray wolves have lived for thousands of years,” said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project. “It’s fantastic news for the wolf program that we’ll have more breeding wolves in more places in Arizona, restoring native wildlife that are so key to healthy ecosystems.” 

“Restoring these wolves to the wild is definitely worth celebrating,” said Chris Smith, southwest wildlife advocate for WildEarth Guardians. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would do well to release more bonded family packs of endangered lobos into the Southwest to help ease the genetic crisis this species is facing.”

“The re-release of Llave and Wonder is exhilarating, both for them and for lobo supporters across the country,” said Regan Downey, director of education at the Wolf Conservation Center. “Llave was named by an impassioned youth advocate who hopes that one day all lobos will roam wild landscapes – let’s make her dreams come true.”

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For Immediate Release March 5, 2024

Contacts:

Greta Anderson, Western Watersheds Project (520) 623-1878; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Claire Musser, Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project (928) 202-1325 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Regan Downey, Wolf Conservation Center (914) 763-2373, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Craig Miller, Defenders of Wildlife (520) 623-9653 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Mary Katherine Ray, Rio Grande Chapter Sierra Club (575) 537-1095 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sally Paez, New Mexico Wild (505) 350-0664; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

MEXICAN GRAY WOLVES NUMBERS GO UP, BUT NUMBERS AREN’T THE WHOLE STORY AND POPULATION STILL DANGEROUSLY LOW, SAY GREENS 

Mexican gray wolf population count increases, but lobos are still among rarest species in the southwestern U.S. 

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Service) released the results of its 2023 wild Mexican gray wolf population count today, revealing that the number of wolves in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico increased to a minimum of 257 wolves. This development isn’t all positive, however, as the wild population’s genetic crisis becomes harder to fix as the population expands. While the Service continues to define recovery of the species according to the overall population count, conservation groups point to the lack of genetic diversity as a long-term threat to the species.

“It’s bittersweet to see the numbers of wolves in the wild increasing, knowing that very little is being done to address the high levels of inbreeding in that population,” said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project. “The agencies will claim this new benchmark shows a trajectory to success, but they aren’t measuring the indicators of genetic diversity which must be addressed with improved policies around adult and family group releases.” 

“The survival of some cross fostered pups, including one born at the Wolf Conservation Center in 2023, is a testament to the love and support shown by wolf parents to their families, but cross foster survival alone won’t fix the genetic crisis. There are hundreds of lobos in captivity, each waiting for the opportunity to reclaim their ancestral homes. We should aim to solve two problems at once and resume adult and family group releases to improve wild genetic diversity and create space in captive facilities,” said Regan Downey, director of education at the Wolf Conservation Center.

Wolves also need access to additional suitable habitat where packs can spread out and provide ecological benefits as a keystone species. Unfortunately, political opposition to expanded habitat into northern Arizona and New Mexico has also hampered the recovery of the species by preventing multiple subpopulations that science shows the lobos need. 

“​​The best available science shows us that suitable wolf habitat exists in the Grand Canyon ecoregion, north of the arbitrary I-40 boundary. Wolves need to disperse for their recovery to be successful, and our wandering wolves should be granted the freedom to roam and establish their packs wherever they choose,”  said Claire Musser, executive director of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project. 

The border wall between the United States and Mexico also continues to block wildlife movement and habitat connectivity. It has prevented Mexican gray wolves from freely moving back and forth between the US and Mexico populations, further jeopardizing recovery and exacerbating the genetic isolation of the two existing populations. 

“The overall growth in the numbers of Mexican wolves in the wild is the result of hard work and coordination between many partners,” said Craig Miller, senior Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “But without more effort to improve the genetics of the population, we can’t celebrate yet. We have a long way to go for the Mexican gray wolf to fulfill its ecological potential.”

“As someone who for the first time recently heard a pair of wolves howling into the mountain night, I was awestruck by the haunting beauty of the sound,” said Mary Katherine Ray, Wildlife Chair for the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. “I know these wolves are too closely related and much more needs to be done to address their lack of gene diversity. The alternative is a population that is at risk of extinction a second time no matter how many there are in the wild now. The mountain night losing its wild wolf howls again is unthinkable.” 

“The expanded Mexican gray wolf population would not be possible without the protection of wild places like the Gila Wilderness, which celebrates its centennial anniversary this year,” said Sally Paez, staff attorney for New Mexico Wild. “Having more of these keystone predators on the landscape will improve ecosystem health and provide more opportunities for people to see and hear the species in the wild.” 

Forward-thinking management is needed to ensure that Mexican gray wolves have the freedom to roam and the legal protection they need to thrive in the wild, including management policies that adequately address the impacts of illegal killing, the risk of genetic inbreeding, climate change, and habitat encroachment. 

Background on Mexican Gray Wolves:

The lobo, or Mexican gray wolf, is the smallest, most genetically distinct, and one of the rarest subspecies of the gray wolf. These native southwestern wolves were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1976 after being eradicated in the wild. Reintroduction efforts began in 1998, but conservation efforts have suffered without the implementation of recommended recovery actions. 

For years, scientists have recommended to the Service that there be three subpopulations of at least 200 wolves each (with a minimum of 750 total), spread throughout the southwestern United States, including areas like the Grand Canyon Ecoregion and the Southern Rockies (Carroll et al. 2006; Wayne and Hedrick 2011; Carroll et al. 2014; Hendricks, et al. 2016). Scientists warn that this metapopulation structure and geographic distribution are imperative to the recovery of Mexican wolves. Unfortunately, we are still far short of this scientific recommendation.

Learn more at www.mexicanwolves.org.

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