Steve Hendrix holds up signs on East Butler Avenue on Friday during a protest urging the Arizona Game and Fish Commision to reverse a plan to remove a Mexican gray wolf family from near Grand Canyon National Park.
Steve Hendrix holds up signs on East Butler Avenue on Friday during a protest urging the Arizona Game and Fish Commision to reverse a plan to remove a Mexican gray wolf family from near Grand Canyon National Park.
Conservation of the Mexican wolf, a unique subspecies of gray wolf, is a qualified success. Recall that by the 1970s organized killing of Mexican wolves had eliminated them from the United States and nearly eliminated them in Mexico.
Given the consequent endangered status of the subspecies, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) developed a captive breeding program from seven unrelated founders. But only three of these would come to constitute 77% of the captive ancestry. In 1998, FWS biologists released descendants from these founders in the Blue Range area near the Arizona-New Mexico border. The aim was to restore a viable population as an essential step toward recovering Mexican wolves. The wild population now includes about 260 animals.
Phil Hedrick was the Ullman Professor of Conservation Biology at Arizona State University and has published many scientific articles on conservation and genetics and several textbooks. Mike Phillips is the Director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund. He has played a key role in conservation and recovery for red wolves, northern gray wolves, and Mexican wolves. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
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