By Brandon Loomis
The Republic | azcentral.com
A Mexican gray wolf and her mate, relocated to eastern Arizona from captivity this spring in hopes of establishing a new pack, have lost their pups.
Without the litter, it’s unclear whether the government will open the wolves’ pen as planned to release them into the wilds of the Apache National Forest, or return them to captivity. The wolves have been in a fenced enclosure since being trucked from New Mexico to an area south of Alpine, giving them a chance to get comfortable in the woods and bond as a family before release.
Officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service had said it appeared from the wolves’ behavior that the mother whelped pups and was keeping them in a wooden den box provided for them. Now, though, officials confirm that those pups have died.
Past releases of the endangered species have had mixed results, with the pairs sometimes breaking up or traveling beyond the designated recovery zone in the Blue Mountains.
“The idea of having a bonded pair of wolves that had whelped pups — that was a pretty good experiment to see if those pups would anchor those wolves to that specific area,” said Larry Riley, assistant director for wildlife management at the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “Well, without those pups, that experiment doesn’t fit together.”
Riley, whose department collaborates on the federal program, said the state is negotiating with federal officials about what to do with the so-called “Coronado Pack.” Tom Buckley, regional spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in an e-mail, “A management decision has not yet been made.”
Conservationists and wolf backers who have long called for more releases from captivity fear that the state will pressure federal officials to take the wolves back. There’s little genetic diversity among the dozens of Mexican wolves living in the wild, and every new pair from captivity helps, said Michael Robinson, a wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.
“These things happen,” Robinson said, adding that moving a pregnant animal can cause stress. “It doesn’t mean necessarily that they won’t be successful the following year.”
“The best thing at this point,” he said, “is to open the gate and let them go.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service said all of the pups died. Officials did not respond to questions about how many there were, or how they died.
The team that captured the adult pair from a holding pen at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge on April 25 sought to calm and comfort them, first by covering their eyes and then by pouring alcohol on their feet to help cool them. The female, dubbed “Ernesta” by those who raised her at a Missouri wolf center, was pregnant.
The pair were loaded into canine crates and trucked a few hours to their would-be home at Corduroy Creek, near the ignition point for the 2011 Wallow Fire. The site was thought fruitful because the burned forest has yielded grasses and shrubs that can feed the deer and elk that the pack would need. At the acclimation pen, biologists have fed them road-killed wildlife.
Prior to the move, a veterinarian vaccinated the pair but withheld certain shots that might upset the pregnancy.
The wolves would be the first pair released in Arizona since November 2008. Since returning the first wolves to the wild in 1998, the government has released nearly 100 from captive breeding programs into Arizona, also allowing them to move into western New Mexico. At last count at the end of 2012, 75 Mexican wolves roamed the Blue Range.
Hunting and extermination programs nearly wiped out the subspecies of gray wolves before the last were captured in Mexico for breeding in the 1980s. The current program grew from just seven genetically distinct wolves.