In 1909 a young Forest Service officer named Aldo Leopold and his crew shot into a family of wolves from a rimrock in the Southwest. Forty years later he wrote that he had reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes, and that he had never forgotten it. Leopold went on to persuade the Forest Service to set aside the headwaters of the Gila as wilderness in 1924. By then the federal government was paying hunters to kill every wolf they could find.
Gone
It very nearly succeeded. The Mexican wolf, the smallest gray wolf in North America, disappeared from the United States, and in 1976 it was listed as endangered. A handful of the last wild wolves were caught in Mexico, and a binational captive breeding program in zoos and other facilities was built from them to keep the subspecies alive.
Back
In 1998 eleven captive-raised wolves were released in eastern Arizona, in a recovery area that runs across the state line into the Gila country of New Mexico. The early years were hard on the wolves; many were shot, hit by cars, or removed for killing livestock. To widen a narrow gene pool, biologists since 2014 have placed captive-born pups into wild dens to be raised by wild packs, a practice called cross-fostering.
Every winter, federal and state crews count the wild wolves with remote cameras, scat collection, radio collars and helicopters, catching and checking some along the way. The count for the end of 2024 found at least 286 wolves in Arizona and New Mexico, in at least 60 packs, more than half of them in southwestern New Mexico.
Neighbors
The wolves share this country with cattle, and the conflict is real. Wolves kill livestock, and in 2024 alone managers carried out about 290 actions to haze wolves away from homes and herds. Ranchers who lose stock, and conservationists who say the wild population is still too small and too inbred, both keep up pressure on the program.
Few visitors ever see a Mexican wolf. NM-15, the slow road to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, runs into the heart of their country, and campers in the Gila now and then hear them at night.