Two Mexican wolves have wandered into the woods near Flagstaff, and federal authorities plan to intercept their movement.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Announced Thursday The company said it intends to capture and release the endangered animals into the federally designated Mexican wolf experimental range, which spans a vast swath of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico south of Interstate 40.
Government trackers have already captured one of the wolves last week on U.S. Forest Service land northwest of Flagstaff. The female was given a medical exam, fitted with a tracking collar and then released again so authorities can find her traveling companions, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.
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Conservationists want the animals left alone.
“If we allow dispersing wolves to go about their lives, we can learn a lot about the connections between wolves and habitat.” Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project “These wolves are telling us their needs and our agencies need to listen.”
Greta Anderson, a wolf advocate in Tucson, said the two animals were simply doing what comes naturally to them: searching for a mate and establishing new territories in suitable habitat.
“What's unusual is that agencies are using the new collar data to move wolves south of Interstate 40, which is an artificial boundary,” said Anderson, the agency's deputy director. Western Watershed Project.
Mexican wolves were once common in the southwestern United States and Mexico, but the gray wolf subspecies was driven to the brink of extinction by the 1970s through hunting, trapping and poisoning.
Captive-bred wolves were first reintroduced to eastern Arizona and western New Mexico in 1998 through a collaboration of nine federal, state and tribal agencies led by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Since then, wolf populations have declined. At least 257 animals.
This is not the first time that wolves that strayed outside experimental areas have been targeted for relocation.
In 2022, a female wolf was captured near Taos, New Mexico, and returned to eastern Arizona, but returned to the same area in northern New Mexico the following year. She has since Captured Again They were then paired with a potential second mate in captivity.
A news release issued Thursday by the Fish and Wildlife Service included a reminder that Mexican wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act, even if they stray north of I-40 or outside designated recovery areas.
It is a federal crime to kill, injure or harass a Mexican wolf unless the animal poses an active threat to human safety, officials said.
This footage was filmed and produced on April 12, 2023. In 1977, there were only 13 Mexican wolves left in the United States. Their habitat was the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua. In the same year, a University of California biologist and his wife purchased 50 acres of land overlooking the Anza-Borrego Desert near the mountain town of Julian in San Diego County. Eventually, the land became the California Wolf Center. In 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service counted 241 wolves in the wild, the first time the number had exceeded 200. Mexican wolves peer through a chain-link fence at the California Wolf Center in Julian, USA. **NOT FOR SALE IN SAN DIEGO. SAN DIEGO IS CLOSED**
