The Mexican gray wolf was nearly extinct by the 1970s due to hunting, with only five remaining in the wild. These last five wolves were captured and used to start a captive breeding program. In the 1980s and 90s, their descendants were reintroduced to the wild in Arizona and New Mexico. The population has since grown to over 100 wolves in the wild by 2014, doubling over the past five years. However, conservation groups argue that the population needs to be much larger, around 750 wolves, to ensure the long-term survival of the species.

1. Jonás Eduardo Josué León

2. Historically, the core range of Mexican wolves
occurred throughout mountainous regions from
central Mexico, through southeastern Arizona,
southern New Mexico, and southwestern Texas.

3. The Mexican wolf was listed as an ENDANGERED SPECIES
in 1976.
Mexican gray wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) nearly went extinct 40 years
ago. After decades of hunting and persecution the last five wild
members of the subspecies were rounded up in 1973 and placed in an
emergency captive breeding program.
Once the Mexican wolf was listed as an endangered species, the
United States and Mexico created a recovery plan. To make this work,
wild Mexican wolves had to be caught. Only 5 wolves were found.
Four males and one pregnant female. These five wolves represented
the hope for the Mexican wolf.

4. These wolves were caught in Durango, and
Chihuahua, Mexico and transferred to the
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson,
Arizona.
There they remained until 1998, when the first of a
series of highly controlled releases took place in
Arizona, followed by later releases in New Mexico.

5. Once driven to the brink extinction in the United States, the
population of Mexican wolves has doubled in the past five years.
There were at least 109 wild Mexican wolves, or lobos, in the
Southwest in 2014, up from 83 in 2013, U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service (FWS) announced. It's the fifth year in a row the small
population has grown. In 2010, there were just 50 Mexican
wolves in the wild.
According to the latest wolf census —there are now 19 packs,
with at least 53 wolves in New Mexico and 56 wolves in Arizona.
The 2014 total also included 38 wild-born pups that survived
through the end of the year, FWS officials said in a statement.

6. Wolf pack ranks
 Alpha – Leader
 Beta – assistant leader
 Other- hunters, pup sitters
 Omega – lowest ranking wolf
 Mexican wolves have a complex social structure and an intricate
communication system that includes scent marking, body
postures, and numerous vocalizations such as howling, barking,
whining, and growling.
Wolf mouth
 Wolves have a total of 42 teeth 10 more than humans.

7. Pack Life
 They live in extended family groups, or packs, consisting of an
adult mated pair and their offspring, often from several
generations.
The alpha pair is usually monogamous, and they typically are the
only breeding animals in the pack.
 The leader alpha. There are 2 leaders in the pack, the alpha male
and alpha female are the head of the social hierarchy of a wolf
pack.
 Mexican wolf pack might consist of 4 - 8 animals, with a territory
encompassing up to several hundred square miles.
 PuppiesMexican wolves breed between mid-February and mid-
March. It takes 63 day gestation period for the puppies to be born. A
normal litter size is 4 to 6 puppies.

8. The Mexican wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf, the smallest
one (1.2-1.5 meters long, weighing 27-37 kilograms).
Until modern times, the Mexican wolf ranged from central nd
Arizona in the United States of America.
Habitat: forests, grasslands, and shrublands.
Food Mexican wolves usually eat the following critters:
Javelina (wild pigs), Rabbits, Deer Small mammals.
Mexican wolves hunt cooperatively to bring down prey animals
usually much larger than themselves.
Mexican wolves can and do occasionally kill livestock, particularly
young animals. Mexican wolves also readily scavenge on carcasses of
prey species.

9. Prey of the wolf
 mice, deer, elk, hare, buffalo, birds, sheep, Ground squirrel, goat,
wild horse, wild boar, porcupine, rabbit, gopher, shrew, rat,
insects, nuts, berries, fruits, shellfish, earthworms, carrion, and
human garbage
Dangers to wolf pups
 Wolf pups are preyed upon by a wide variety of predators,
including bears, cougars, and other wolves.
 Hunters are also a danger to many wolf pups

10. In the 1980s, when wildlife officials were devising ways to
reintroduce captive-bred Mexican wolves in the Southwest, their
goal was to have 100 individuals in the wild to guard against
extinction.
Earlier this year, FWS officials announced that Mexican
wolves would be protected as a subspecies under the
Endangered Species Act, separate from gray wolves. The
agency also expanded the territory for the population of
Mexican wolves and set an objective to boost their
numbers to up to 325 individuals.

11. But conservation groups like the Center for Biological Diversity
have pointed to a previous study prepared for FWS, which found
that 750 Mexican wolves across three sub-populations were
necessary to ensure the species survival. Wolf advocates also took
issue with the agency's decision to grant permits allowing people
and state agencies to kill wolves that prey on livestock or have an
"unacceptable impact" to a wild herd of elk, deer.

12. "Allowing Mexican gray wolves to disperse over a broader area is a
positive, but that positive is negated by an unfounded population cap
and increased authorized killing — neither of which is based in the
science that says what's best for lobos.”
These wolves may have lived in the wild now for almost 17 years, but U.S.
officials haven’t truly considered them to be wild. Instead, the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service (FWS) has actually labeled the animals as a
“nonessential experimental population” of the main gray wolf species,
which meant they could be removed from the wild at any time. Indeed,
several re-wilded wolves have been returned to captivity over the years
after they threatened the animals on nearby cattle ranches. Others have
been shot and killed.

13. THANKS