Wildlife Wednesday: Mexican Wolf Population Continues To Grow

By Ben Neary

NMWF Conservation Director

The population of Mexican wolves in New Mexico and Arizona continues to rise and biologists are preparing for their annual winter survey to determine exact numbers.

John Oakleaf, senior wolf scientist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will give a presentation on the wolf-reintroduction program. He’s the December featured speaker for the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Wednesday series.

Oakleaf’s free talk will start at 5:30 p.m., Dec. 10., at Marble Brewery’s Northeast Heights Taproom, 9904 Montgomery, NE., in Albuquerque. 

Oakleaf and other biologists are gearing up to conduct their annual population survey of Mexican wolves in New Mexico and Arizona in coming months. The count involves tracking wolves in the ground with an emphasis on identifying groups that lack radio collars.

The next step involves tracking the targeted wolves form helicopters and darting them with tranquilizers. Once they’re captured, biologists and veterinarians will examine them, collar those that need it and release them back into the wild.

Last winter’s wolf population survey reported a minimum of 286 Mexican wolves distributed across southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. That finding marked the ninth consecutive year of population increase.

“The population’s still cruising along,” Oakleaf said. “Wolves are doing fine. A lot is put out there about individual animals, and that tells the story of that individual, which is often tragic. But most of the time, the population as a whole continues trucking along.”

Oakleaf holds a doctoral degree focusing on Mexican wolves from Texas Tech University. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming and attended graduate school at the University of Idaho. 

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 wild Mexican wolf population generally lives in the Gila National Forest and neighboring wilderness areas and wild lands in southern New Mexico and Arizona. On the New Mexico side of the border, state and federal wildlife managers work to keep  the wolves south of I-40, in a zone that extends north of Silver City and south of Magdalena.

When wolves stray outside that area, wildlife professionals try to capture them and return them to the core wolf area. The New Mexico Department of Game and fish captured a male Mexican wolf in early November north of Gallina, in Rio Arriba County. They returned it to the Gila National Forest.

Oakleaf said biologists are gathering information on wolf populations now and will conduct the helicopter count/capture operation at the end of January. “November, December and January are our time range of gathering information on that end of year count,” he said.

In addition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, agency sponsors of the wolf-reintroduction program include the Arizona Game and Fish Department, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, U.S. Forest Service, USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services, White Mountain Apache Tribe, Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. National Park Service. 

The Mexican wolf is listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Delisting the wolf would require the existence of healthy, growing populations in both the United States and Mexico. Delisting would require 320 wolves on average over an eight-year period in the U.S. as well as a separate population in Mexico of 200 wolves.

Oakleaf said he expects Mexican authorities will conduct some wolf releases early next year.

“They’re still working along and working on doing things,” Oakleaf said of Mexican wildlife officials. “So I think they’re picking up from what they’ve done in the last few years. There was kind of a let-off in releases and some, I guess, concerns that they had to address before they released more wolves down there. I think those concerns are addressed and they’re working on it. So it seems to be going good.”

Several New Mexico counties have passed resolutions this year stating that the presence of wolves poses a threat to children and others and calling on the federal government to take action. There have been no confirmed cases of Mexican wolves attacking people in the wild.

Wolves prey on wildlife as well as on livestock. Various government and private agencies have programs to reimburse ranchers for wolf depredation on their cattle, although ranchers have decried the programs as problematic and insufficient.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., has sponsored legislation to delist the Mexican wolf and separate management in the United States from Mexico. Several livestock groups in New Mexico and Arizona have expressed support. Gosar has claimed the wolves are a threat to public safety.

Oakleaf said he and others in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are committed to the ongoing wolf-recovery process.

“That’s what our goals are. We’ll go down the path until they’re recovered,” Oakleaf said. “And then you can delist and move on from there. All the political stuff that goes on is political stuff, so we don’t concern ourselves with that one way or another or else we wouldn’t sleep.”

Oakleaf said he’s accustomed to hearing from people who don’t like having wolves around, but said he discounts any claim they pose a threat to people.

“I think there’s always a push _ the closer you live to wolves, the less you generally like them,” Oakleaf said. “I think that’s been the pattern through time. The more you have to deal with something, the harder it is. But in general, I always tell people the same thing. I’m more worried about rattlesnakes, or a whole host of other things in the woods – breaking my leg on a rock –  than I ever am about wolves.”