Mexican Wolf To Face Reduced Federal protections as population Continues to Climb

By Ben Neary/NMWF

Federal wildlife managers expect that the rising population of Mexican wolf in New Mexico and Arizona will allow them to ease protections for the species in perhaps as soon as two years.

Brady McGee, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Mexican wolf recovery coordinator, will discuss the progress of wolf recovery efforts and outline future management in a free presentation June 10 in Albuquerque. He’s the featured June speaker for the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s “Wildlife Wednesday” series.

The Mexican wolf had been extirpated in the United States by the mid-1900s. All the wolves alive today are descended from a base population of only seven animals that the USFWS rounded up in the 1970s – five wild wolves from Mexico and two from a zoo. Starting with such a small gene pool, restoration efforts have focused on breeding wolves that are as distantly related to each other as possible. The program has released wolves into the wild since 1998.

The population of Mexican wolves in New Mexico and Arizona has increased every year over the past several years. McGee said the population must average 320 wolves in the two states over a four-year period in order for its federal status to drop from endangered to threatened.

Last year’s count was 317 wolves and the year before was 286, McGee said. He said it’s possible, considering expected continued annual population increases, that the population could meet the four-year average requirement within the next two years.

Ultimately delisting the Mexican wolf from federal protections entirely will require meeting population goals for the species in Mexico as well — a much harder requirement. “We haven’t been able to do anything for about the last three years down there and we’re starting to do more,” he said, adding that his June 10 presentation will give an update on the species restoration work there.

Under the current classification as an endangered species, Mexican wolves are protected south of I-40 in New Mexico. They mainly live in the Gila country, north of Silver City. In that home range, they can be discouraged from molesting livestock through the use of rubber bullets, noise-makers and, in rare cases, even killing a wolf that won’t stop killing livestock. North of I-40, they’re fully protected as endangered species, and the federal law prevents anyone from interfering with them.

Reducing the protection status of Mexican wolves from endangered to threatened would reduce the regulations even more and give ranchers more flexibility to deal with problem wolves themselves, McGee said.

Classifying wolves as threatened would also mean that the wolves would be free to travel north of I-40. Under the current system, wildlife managers track and capture any wolves that go north of the interstate and remove them back south. “And so wolves would be allowed to sort of wander around more, and settle wherever they settle, which includes north of I-40,” McGee said.

The wolf recovery program has gone well in recent years, McGee said.

“When the recovery program first started 25 years ago, it started off very slow, because it’s very hard to get wolves established on the ground, and get them established so that they’re wild wolves and behave wildly,” McGee said. He said that once the population rises above a certain point, it achieves an exponential growth rate.

“And we started getting them past that point about ten years ago,” McGee said. “So the last eight years, nine years in particular, we’ve seen that exponential growth happening.”

With that population increase, some in New Mexico’s ranching community have stepped up criticism of the reintroduction program in recent years. Residents in Reserve and other communities have expressed concern that the wolves pose a threat to residents.

McGee said the anti-wolf sentiment hasn’t abated. “In fact there are a few people that are leading the charge, and saying that public safety is a huge threat to the local communities although we have not had any experiences of wolves attacking people or anything like that.”

McGee’s free presentation will start at 5:30 p.m. June 10 at the Marble Brewery Northeast Heights Taproom, at 9904 Comanche Blvd. NE, in Albuquerque.