2025 has been an eventful year for Mexican wolves. The imperiled predators — a subspecies of gray wolf reintroduced to the Southwest in 1998 — appeared to be bounding toward recovery: According to the latest census, released in March, about 286 wolves roam Arizona and New Mexico, marking a nine-year growth streak. In response, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., introduced a bill in July to remove them from the list of federally endangered species.
At a subcommittee hearing this fall, Gosar said federal protection is no longer necessary and that too many cattle and sheep — “even family pets,” he claimed — were being lost to wolf predation. (Mexican wolf attacks on pets are rare but do occur; one dog was killed in 2023 and another injured in 2024, according to federal recovery program records.)
But delisting the animals would be premature, say wolf advocates and some tribal representatives. The wild population still hasn’t yet reached the threshold of 320 wolves averaged over eight years, the criteria for delisting set by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nor have the agency’s other benchmarks been met.
Removing federal protection could reverse decades of progress, said Bryan Bird, Southwest director for Defenders of Wildlife. In New Mexico, where they’re also listed as endangered by the state, wolves would still be protected from hunting, but Arizona lacks such state-level protections.
“I think we’re on the cusp of a really American wildlife success story, like the bald eagle or the American alligator,” Bird said. “It would be extraordinarily unfortunate if the legislative branch was to step in now, when we really are making progress.” If delisting does occur, Bird added, the states would likely work with federal wildlife managers to maintain a certain number of wolves to prevent relisting.
“It would be extraordinarily unfortunate if the legislative branch was to step in now, when we really are making progress.”
Clark Tenakhongva, a Hopi rancher and artist, said that for the Hopi, delisting Mexican wolves would have cultural as well as ecological impacts. “They were here before humans, so we’re encroaching on their territory and their ancestral rights to roam the land,” he said. Wolves have always been a part of the tribe’s kachina ceremonies, he added: “They belong as much as humans and cattle on this land.”
Successful legislative attempts to force delisting — circumventing Fish and Wildlife’s authority to remove federal protections through a lengthy administrative process — are few, and history suggests the bill’s chances are slim. Gosar’s attempt to pass a similar bill in 2015 failed. But Mexican wolf numbers are at their highest since reintroduction began, and with Republicans ruling Congress alongside an administration willing to break long-established norms, Gosar and other delisting proponents see an unusual opportunity to unravel the subspecies’ federal safety net.
WHEN FISH AND WILDLIFE first released Mexican wolves into the ponderosa pine forests of southeastern Arizona in the 1990s, even federal wildlife managers doubted that the reintroduction would succeed. Genetic diversity was a concern from the start: The reintroduced animals traced their ancestry back to just seven “founders” from three different genetic lineages. “Every individual is as closely related as a sibling,” said Philip Hedrick, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University who studies genetics in Mexican wolves and other wildlife populations. Inbreeding can affect reproduction as well as hinder wolves’ ability to adapt to environmental changes like warming temperatures or shifts in prey, he added.
To preserve genetic diversity, managers need to keep as many wolves alive as possible. But that’s not always possible: Wolves that become habituated to preying on livestock are often removed or killed to appease livestock producers.
But despite these constraints, federal managers, tribal leaders and conservationists have succeeded in growing the population over the last three decades. The Department of Agriculture created a compensation program for ranchers who lost livestock, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began providing states and tribes with funding for deterrence methods designed to keep wolves away from rangelands. Meanwhile, biologists played matchmaker for the Mexican wolves in 60 zoos and other captive breeding facilities across the country. Adult captive-bred wolves were released to boost the wild population’s genetic diversity, and in 2016, managers began placing captive-born pups in dens to be raised by “adoptive” families, though only about a quarter of the 99 pups released through 2023 survived their first year.
If Gosar’s bill succeeds, these efforts would likely end or have to be paid for by the states. New initiatives supported by some conservation groups — allowing the expanding Mexican wolf population to intermingle with the far larger northern gray wolf population to the north, for example — would face even steeper odds. (Currently, Mexican wolves that venture north of I-40, the northern boundary of the official reintroduction area, are captured and brought back.)
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s recovery plan also addresses Mexican wolves in Mexico, requiring that population to show consistent growth and reach 200 wolves before the subspecies as a whole can be delisted. But only 35 to 40 Canis lupus baileyi live south of the border, making it unlikely that recovery goals will be met before 2043. Gosar’s bill would “decouple” the U.S. population from the Mexican population, allowing the Mexican wolf to be delisted in Arizona and New Mexico before it recovers in Mexico.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the New Mexico Department of Fish and Wildlife declined to discuss Gosar’s proposal. But recent public statements from all three agencies reflect newfound optimism about the animal’s future. After nine years of growth, “we are knocking on the door of recovery,” said New Mexico Department of Game and Fish wildlife chief Stewart Liley in a March press release.
EVEN AS WOLF NUMBERS have risen, confirmed livestock depredations have declined, with confirmed wolf kills falling in four out of the past six years. But some ranchers worry that as the U.S. population expands into new territory, livestock losses could multiply, especially as the region’s prolonged drought makes it harder for wolves to find food. New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association president Tom Paterson, who recently lost a yearling steer to a wolf, said that cows in these areas are at risk in part because they “don’t know how to protect themselves or their calves.”
Paterson supports Gosar’s delisting bill but wants the federal compensation program, which is authorized by Congress in the annual Farm Bill, to not only continue but expand. He estimated it will cost about $1.5 million a year to compensate ranchers for expected losses, far more than the $190,000 currently available.
With the right management, he added, “we can have sustainable recovery. I can do my business, and we can have wolves out on the landscape.”
I can do my business, and we can have wolves out on the landscape.”
On lands where wolves and livestock overlap, a little planning and foresight can go a long way, said Sisto Hernandez, a former range management specialist for the White Mountain Apache Tribe and currently Southwest resources coordinator for the Western Landowners Alliance.
Wolf managers have developed a number of deterrence methods over the years, including fladry, electric fencing and noise boxes. In the Southwest, range riders work especially well, he said. “It takes a lot of rangeland to support our cattle” in the arid Southwest, he explained. “So what works in Montana isn’t effective here.” Range riders, or “conflict resolution specialists,” as Hernandez called them (“people don’t like ‘cowboy’”) can keep an eye on livestock across a large area.
Keeping both livestock and wolves safe from harm requires a combination of vigilance and flexibility, he noted. “You have to be adaptable,” Hernandez said. “The same pack may behave differently from one ranch to the next.”
As far as Hernandez and the ranchers he works with are concerned, he said, delisting is far from the most important thing. What ranchers really need “is to have the resources and technical assistance necessary to help us continue to steward the land we operate on. Because we’re not just taking care of livestock, we’re also stewarding the land for all of the wildlife species that we share the land with.”
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.
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