Go Inside a Mexican Wolf Recovery Project

The critically endangered Mexican wolf was mounting a comeback, thanks to a conservation program that dropped fostered wolf pups into wild dens. Then politics happened.

By Justin Grubb edited by Jeffery DelViscio

When I documented the pup swap just one year ago, I learned that the program had been going strong for a decade, following the first successful foster in 2014. But it had taken nearly 20 years to get to that first foster. Since 1998 the Mexican wolf recovery effort has been an extraordinarily complex initiative, spanning state and international borders and requiring the collaboration of local nongovernmental organizations, tribal leaders, and state and federal agencies. 

The decades of effort seem to be working. As of last year, nearly 300 Mexican wolf pups have been fostered into the wild.

Now that progress hangs in the balance.

Severe funding cuts to the agencies that have been responsible for this work are putting the Mexican wolf—and countless other endangered species—at greater risk. And while the Mexican wolf recovery project may seem like an effort to save one isolated species, the reestablishment of ecosystem architects such as this wolf can have huge long-term effects on the health of our ecosystems.

As Danielle Rosenstein of the Endangered Wolf Center said in Operation Wolf Foster, “Mexican wolves play a key role in the ecosystem in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico. They’re what’s known as a keystone species. And without them, that whole trophic cascade falls apart.”

As conservationists brace for an uncertain future, they are being forced to navigate the growing challenges left in the wake of the current administration’s policies. And for the Mexican wolf, the future may be less bright.

AbouT the Project

Running Wild Media partnered with Scientific American, the Endangered Wolf Center, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a network of Mexican wolf recovery partners to tell the remarkable story of a single litter of pups—born in managed care at the Endangered Wolf Center and released into the wild to live out their lives.

In the early morning hours, staff at the Endangered Wolf Center gathered the pups, performed health checks, and carefully loaded them onto a plane bound for New Mexico. There, field biologists awaited to complete the final leg of their journey: introducing them to a wild den.

This project marks the first time an entire litter has been documented from birth to release, offering an unprecedented look at the on-the-ground efforts to save this species from extinction. Once declared extinct in the wild in the United States, the Mexican wolf population now numbers nearly 300, thanks to the dedication of these conservation teams.

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