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The last survivors of a decades-long campaign of poisoning and trapping, a handful of Mexican gray wolves were captured in the wilds of Mexico in the 1970s for an emergency captive-breeding program to save the “lobo” from extinction. Today, the future of the species hinges on the descendants of these few individuals — inquisitive, highly social, and determined to survive the perils of life in the wild.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Endangered; nonessential, experimental population
YEAR PLACED ON LIST: Endangered 1976; nonessential, experimental population 1998
RECOVERY PLAN: 1982
CRITICAL HABITAT: Not required for species listed prior to 1978
RANGE: Currently limited to the Gila Headwaters ecosystem in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico
THREATS: Federal predator control, poaching, and trapping
POPULATION TREND: By the 1930s, Mexican gray wolves had been eliminated from the United States. Reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf began in 1998, yet by 2007, the federal government had killed or permanently removed 54 wolves. The estimated number of Mexican gray wolves remaining in the wild (excluding pups): 55.
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SAVING THE MEXICAN GRAY WOLF
Despite Endangered Species Act protection and an official change in policy from eradication to conservation, Mexican gray wolves still face the same political forces that drove them to the brink of extinction. In 1990, the Center participated in a lawsuit against the U.S. government that led to the reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest. In 1998, the first captive-reared Mexican gray wolves were released in the Blue Range Recovery Area. But in the same year, the wolf was designated a nonessential, experimental population, allowing for “management flexibility” that permits the killing of wolves suspected of livestock predation.
The wolf recovery program has been tragically mismanaged. Wolves have been shot, have disappeared suspiciously, and have been killed in hit-and-run incidents. Under pressure from the livestock industry, the U.S. government has killed and trapped so many Mexican gray wolves that the small wild population has fluctuated and is now at the same numbers as in 2003.
The Center has thwarted congressional efforts and state legislation that would have eviscerated the reintroduction program. We're pushing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to adopt stricter wolf-protection standards, allow wolves establishing territories outside the recovery area to remain in the wild, and release wolves into a broader area.
We successfully intervened in two livestock-industry lawsuits attempting to remove all wolves from the wild, and we’re seeking reforms that would require livestock owners to take responsibility for cleaning up cattle carcasses before wolves become habituated to them. Our 2006 lawsuit led to a rule-change process to evaluate this and other reforms. And we and our allies sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for its decision to put wolf reintroduction in the hands of agencies that have allowed wolf killings to rise — as well as for approving a law requiring all wolves with a certain depredation record to be “removed.” Most recently, we wrote a forceful letter to the government-appointed wolf-management team requesting an end to government wolf removals.
ACTION TIMELINE
+ CAMPAIGN LINKS
NATURAL HISTORY
+ MEDIA
+ DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS
Mexican gray wolf recovery area
Center-authored article: "Protected Wolves Still Caught in Trap"
Center-authored book: Predatory Bureaucracy
+ DETRITUS
Contact: Michael Robinson
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