Mexican gray wolf population grows by 23 percent
Colorado will adopt gray wolf reintroduction plan this spring
After coming within a hair’s breadth of extinction in the 1950s, wolves are making a comeback in the Southwest, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announcing late last month that there are now at least 241 Mexican gray wolves living in the wild in the United States.
To the north of Taos County, Colorado is set to begin restoring gray wolves to the landscape by the end of the year.
The Mexican gray wolf population grew by 23 percent over last year’s count, marking the seventh consecutive year of population growth for the subspecies, which was first reintroduced in southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona in 1998. The growth rate represents a doubling of the population since 2017, and known deaths declined last year to just 12 — less than half of the 25 mortalities recorded in 2021.
“This milestone has been 25 years in the making,” said Brady McGee, Mexican wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the program. “To go from zero wild Mexican wolves at the start to 241 today is truly remarkable. In 2022, we recorded more packs, more breeding pairs and a growing occupied range, proving we are on the path to recovery. These achievements are a testament to partner-driven conservation in the West.”
The population is distributed with 136 wolves in New Mexico and 105 in Arizona. Several dozen more Mexican gray wolves live south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The road to recovery for any endangered species is neither straight or easy, and this has proven to be the case for the Mexican wolf,” said Jim deVos,
Mexican wolf coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “With the stunning growth that occurred in 2022, recovery has accelerated at an amazing rate. By every possible measure, progress was made, including the production from 31 breeding pairs that produced 121 pups, of which 81 were documented to having survived to the time of the count, which is a very high survival rate of 67 percent. While the road to recovery still has ground to be covered, in 2022, the recovery program covered a lot of ground.”
Mexican wolf population information is gathered from November through February by the program’s Interagency Field Team. During this time, the team conducts ground and aerial surveys using a variety of methods, including remote cameras, scat collection and visual observation. Counting the population at the end of each year allows for comparable year-to-year trends at a time of year when the Mexican wolf population is most stable.
Wolf advocates celebrated the news, but cautioned that the Mexican gray wolf population is still deficient in genetic diversity. Genetic diversity in the southwestern wolves remains as low as found in almost any animal population in the world, according to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, which criticized the practice of releasing captive born pups into adult wolf dens in the wild, a technique known as cross fostering.
“Just two of 11 captive-born wolf pups released during 2022 into the dens of unrelated wolves are known to be alive, which is typical of pups released without their parents,” according to the press release. “Of the 83 total captive-born pups released since 2016, just 14 were known to be alive in 2022.”
Although the number of Mexican gray wolves is increasing, the genetic diversity of the wolf population is lower today than in 2007, according to the environmental group.
“Celebrating population growth while ignoring genetic stagnation is short-sighted,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s time the agency resumed releasing well-bonded wolf families in which parents are usually successful in keeping pups alive to pass on their precious DNA.”
Mexican gray wolves are a genetically and morphologically unique gray wolf subspecies native to Mexico and the southwestern United States.
Many wolf advocates have long advocated for eliminating the northern boundary of the Mexican gray wolf experimental population area and allowing the species to establish a separate population near the Grand Canyon, for example, something scientists say would aid in improving the genetic diversity of the species. Were the boundary to be eliminated, Mexican gray wolves could also, in theory, eventually intermingle with their larger gray wolf cousins from Colorado, enhancing the genetic diversity of the rare subspecies.
In 2020, a slim majority of mostly-urban Colorado voters approved a statewide ballot measure to launch a state-initiated gray wolf reintroduction program. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials wrapped up a series of public meetings last month and are now anticipating the May adoption of the state’s final reintroduction plan for the species — which will not institute any geographical boundaries for the program.
Gray wolves, which are more widely dispersed across the western United States than their smaller southern cousins,
already exist in small numbers in far northeastern Colorado as a result of natural migration from Wyoming. In its proposed rule for the state-administered reintroduction program in Colorado, Fish and Wildlife cited studies that estimate the state could biologically support between 400 and 1,200 wolves, a scenario that worries many ranchers in the Centennial State.
To at least partially allay concerns about wolf depredations, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission has responded with a generous reimbursement program for lost livestock. After reviewing 4,000 public comments, the commission recommended a cap of $15,000 for livestock compensation, which is many times higher than what
ranchers in New Mexico and Arizona are compensated for Mexican wolf depredations; that amount will also allow for veterinary expenses and compensation for guard and herding animals, bringing the potential maximum compensation to $30,000 for each animal.
Final edits are being made to the draft Colorado plan based on the commission’s guidance. The final plan, and associated regulations, will be adopted via a two-step approval process at Parks and Wildlife Commission meetings on April 6 in Steamboat Springs and on May 3-4 in Glenwood Springs.