Rare and endangered creature visits New Mexico park for the first time in 91 years

Helena Wegner
·2 min read
105

A rare and endangered Mexican wolf visited the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico for the first time in 91 years, park officials said.

The female wolf named Asha, formally identified as F2754, traveled north from the “Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area” and reached the nature preserve on Nov. 11, the National Park Service said in a Dec. 28 news release.

Asha wandered around the Jemez Mountains before returning to the park, making her the first Mexican wolf to visit the nature preserve since 1932, officials said.

However, she was captured on Dec. 9 near Coyote.

“Dispersal events like this are often in search of a mate. As there are no other known wolves in the area, she was unlikely to be successful, and risked being mistaken for a coyote and shot,” Mexican wolf recovery coordinator Brady McGee said in a news release.

This photo shows a Mexican wolf (not Asha). The animals nearly became extinct.
This photo shows a Mexican wolf (not Asha). The animals nearly became extinct.

Wolf captured, paired with male

She was taken to the Sevilleta Wolf Management Facility, south of Albuquerque, and paired with a male Mexican wolf in hopes the two animals will produce a pup, officials said.

Wildlife officials said she will then be taken back to the wild in the spring or summer with her pups.

“We were thrilled to see the brief visit of a wolf to this landscape,” Valles Caldera National Preserve Superintendent Jorge Silva-Bañuelos said in the release. “The park’s ecosystem used to be home to Mexican wolf.”

The Mexican wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf, was listed as endangered in 1976, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Thousands of these animals once lived across New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and northern Mexico, officials said.

By the 1900s, nearly every Mexican wolf was killed out of worry they would target livestock, leaving the species nearly extinct, wildlife officials said.

As of 2022, there are about 241 Mexican wolves living in the wild across southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona, officials said.

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