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Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com

Healthy wolf pups born

Healthy wolf pups born

By Tom Jackson King, Managing Editor

After a long drought, there is finally some good news
to report about the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction
program — seven wolf pups were born to the Pipestem
Pack in southwestern New Mexico, they were captured
May 5 and all are healthy.

The bad news side of the coin is that the pups’
parents, alpha male 190 and alpha female 628, have a
three-time losing streak of killing local cattle.

The history of cattle attacks by the parents of the
wolf pups puts into question where the seven-member
family can be relocated to once the family is reunited
are by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel.

The intent of the five-year, $9 million program is to
put 100 endangered Mexican gray wolves into federal
forests in Arizona and New Mexico, and the birth of
pups in the wild is a milestone toward that objective.
Since the death rate for wolf pups born in the wild
during the first three years of the program has ranged
from 50 to 80 percent, the capture of seven new-born
pups means all seven might survive to yearling status.

Elizabeth Slown, public affairs specialist for USFWS,
said the pups “are healthy and are under the care of
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists in
Albuquerque. The pups are responding well to a formula
diet.”

Slown said agency field biologists have tried to
capture the parents, including a helicopter-assisted
capture effort Friday, May 10, which was successful.

“They got the female at 10:30 and the male at 11:30.
They did it with a net gun. The pack will be reunited
at the wolf facility at Sevilleta National Wildlife
Refuge near San Acacia, N.M.,” she said. “The pups are
on their way there too.”

Brian Kelly, Mexican wolf recovery coordinator for
USFWS, said the agency is doing a blood analysis on
all seven pups to determine their pedigree — whether
they all have the same father.

“The coloring on one pup is not consistent with what
we expect of Mexican gray wolves,” he said.

Slown said the pedigree evaluation of the pups is
vital to the program’s success. “We’re looking at
their pedigree, their bloodline. We consider hybrids a
problem. We hope we’ll have the blood analysis done by
the end of this week,” she said.

USFWS has itself raised the issue of wolf-dog hybrids
being present in the Gila Wilderness and Apache
National Forest. It has blamed hybrids for some
attacks on livestock and some of the threatening
behavior towards humans. However, the agency admits
some wolf packs develop into problem packs that have a
habit of preying on calves and other livestock. In
those cases, the federal wolf management plan requires
the offending wolves be captured and relocated to an
area where they will be out of conflict with
livestock.

“The parents were killing cows so we had to get them
moved,” Slown said.

Kelly has said it is vitally important to train
new-born wolf pups to rely on natural prey food, such
as deer and elk, rather than on livestock. The capture
and removal of the seven wolf pups not only greatly
increases the likelihood of their survival to
maturity, but it also removes them from exposure to
parents that attack and feed on cattle.

Whether parents and pups can “go straight” in the
future and rely on wild prey remains to be seen.

There could be several more births of wolf pups in the
wild within the next few weeks. Kelly said wolf
females normally birth their litters of 4-6 pups in
mid-April to mid-May.

A report issued by USFWS says alpha females are
thought to be denning — presumably with pups — in
the Saddle Pack, Cienega Pack, Gapiwi Pack and Luna
Pack groups. Two packs are based mainly in Arizona
while two are based primarily in New Mexico.

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