High Noon for the Mexican Wolf? 

A Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) of undetermined sex was captured on camera roaming the back country of the Sierra Madre Occidental in northern Mexico, very precariously. The snapshot was recorded earlier this year on a trap camera in the Campo Verde region of the Chihuahua-Sonora borderlands but not publicized until this month. 

According to Mexico’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp), which administers the Campo Verde Natural Protected Area, the photo was considered significant in that the lobo in question did not possess a GPS collar and was likely the offspring of wolves released in the region under the auspices of the binational Mexico-U.S. Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program. 

Conanp reported that the first person who beheld the wolf’s image was a Campo Verde committee member who told the protected area’s chief of a “strange coyote” photographed by a trap camera while drinking water. Taking a peek, the chief immediately realized that the animal wasn’t a coyote, but its bigger cousin. 

Conanp asserted that the thirsty wolf photo showed “a great advance in in the conservation of wolves since it is now possible to speak of the first wild populations in the country after more than five decades.” 

In 2021, the Mexican federal government agency calculated that at least 14 wolf litters had been born into the country’s northern wild lands since the beginning of the reintroduction program a decade earlier. 

Covering about 280,000 acres, the Campo Verde Natural Protected Area offers suitable habitat for the recovery of the Mexican gray wolf. Mid-range mountainous elevations encompass pine and oak forests, hosting vital wolf prey like the white-tailed deer. 

Before U.S.-led extermination campaigns almost drove an apex predator to extinction, the Mexican gray wolf inhabited broad regions of northern and central Mexico, ranging as far south as the southern state of Oaxaca, as well as big swaths of the U.S. Southwest. In Mexico, the Mexican gray wolf is officially classified as an animal in danger of extinction.  

Currently, Conanp estimates that 30-35 wild wolves inhabit the Chihuahua-Sonora borderlands- about the same number estimated by Conanp and Mexican researcher Carlos López in 2019.  

The latest population estimate in Mexico represents a small number indeed, but it’s more than in the 1970s when a handful of the last known wild Mexican wolves was captured and successfully bred to later allow the release of wolves in both the United States and Mexico. 

Getting the lead on its southern neighbor, the U.S. reintroduced Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest beginning in 1998; Mexico followed suit starting in 2011. 

The U.S. component of the binational program has proven far more successful, with the latest U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service census numbers (late 2024) estimating at least 286 Mexican gray wolves in Arizona and New Mexico. Nonetheless, the canines face highly uncertain futures in both countries.  

Species recovery is seriously jeopardized by illegal killings, vehicle collisions, human-induced climate change, wildfires, and habitat encroachment.  

Moreover, the lobo’s historic territory has been squeezed by U.S. government policy that limits the acceptable presence of the predators to below Interstate 40, and prevents animals from moving freely across the landscape like they’ve done for eons by constructing high, impassable walls on the U.S.-Mexican border in New Mexico and Arizona. Any wolf that somehow manages to cross an increasingly fenced off border is subject to capture. 

Wolf advocates recognize that official binational efforts have returned the Mexican gray wolf to the wild, but they warn that population fragmentation threatens genetic diversity and long term species survival.

Although wolves again howl away in remote stretches of the Southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, securing their renewed presence has been no easy task. Legal, political and public opinion battles have accompanied the return of the Mexican gray wolf, north and south. Now a new and possibly decisive showdown is shrouding the wolf’s future. 

On June 30, Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar rolled out the Enhanced Safety for Animals Act (HR 4255), which if approved will delist the Mexican gray wolf from Endangered Species Act protections. 

“Mexican wolves have preyed on cattle, livestock, and even family pets, causing significant financial losses and economic hardship on family-run ranches,” Gosar said in a statement justifying his legislation.  

Bearing the same initials as the Endangered Species Act, Rep. Gosar’s legislation is backed by 20 agricultural, ranching, commercial and county organizations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Lands Council, Coalition of Arizona/New Mexico Counties and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, among others. 

Cosponsors of the bill referred to the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources include Republican Representatives Andy Biggs (Arizona), Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Eli Crane (Arizona), Abe Hamadeh (Arizona), Harriet Hageman (Wyoming), Jeff Hurd (Colorado) Doug LaMalfa (California), Tom McClintock (California), Pete Stauber (Minnesota), Tom Tiffany (Wisconsin), and Ryan Zinke (Montana).  

Gosar maintains that the Mexican gray wolf population is no longer in danger of extinction and should be delisted from the Endangered Species Act. 

Wolf advocates, of course, strongly beg to differ. Conservationists quickly condemned Gosar’s measure, characterizing it as akin to declaring an open season on wolves, especially in Arizona where, unlike New Mexico, no state law grants added protection to the endangered species. Wolf protectors predict that killings would also increase in neighboring New Mexico, where many such crimes have already been registered in spite of the federal and state protections. 

“Bypassing the Endangered Species Act to strip all protections from beleaguered Mexican gray wolves and leave them vulnerable to Arizona’s shoot-on-sight laws would cause a massacre,” contended wolf expert Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. 

According to a statement issued by Robinson and representatives of eight other leading environmental and conservation groups, removing the Mexican gray wolf from the U.S. endangered species list would not only permit killing with impunity, but also end releases of captive wolves aimed at diversifying the gene pool of wild wolves, halt federal investigations of livestock kills possibly related to wolves, slash federal funding to compensate ranchers for livestock losses, and halt monitoring of wolves. In other words, ditto the Mexican gray wolf.  

Michelle Lute, executive director of Wildlife for All, termed the bill “a cynical ploy to appease special interests at the expense of the democratic process, public trust and the survival of one of North America’s most endangered mammals.” 

In addition to the Center for Biological Diversity and Wildlife for All, representatives of the Western Watersheds Project, Wolf Conservation Center, Lobos of the Southwest, WildEarth Guardians, Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project, and Sierra Club-Grand Canyon Chapter signed on to the statement expressing opposition to the Gosar bill. Stay tuned for upcoming battles in a matter of existential importance for Mexico, the United States and the world.     

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