Category

Mexican Wolf

The last two wild Mexican wolves in Texas were killed in 1970, following a multi-decade effort to exterminate the predator with traps, poisons and bounties. In 1977, remnant Mexican wolves were caught in Mexico, and brought into captive breeding, leading to release and gradual recovery in Arizona and New Mexico. Reintroductions to Texas, however, have been blocked.

Interviews

Narrator: Rick LoBelloTitle: Cross-FosteringDuration: 00:01:34Date: July 8, 2022Rick Lobello is the education curator for the El Paso Zoo, and a long-time advocate for restoration of the Mexican wolf to its former range in Texas. Here he tells about the Zoo's participation in captive breeding of the wolf, and release of pups to be raised by wild wolves in Arizona and New Mexico, in a process known as "cross-fostering".Narrator: Rick LoBelloTitle: ReintroductionDuration: 00:04:56Date: July 8, 2022Rick LoBello has worked at the El Paso Zoo, the Big Bend Natural History Association, and the Carlsbad Caverns Guadalupe Mountains Association. For many years, he has promoted the reintroduction of the Mexican wolf to west Texas, believing that the return of that apex predator would help control exotic species, reduce overgrazing, and decrease disease in deer populations.Narrator: Dave ParsonsTitle: Wolves, Cows, and AllotmentsDuration: 00:04:13Date: April 20, 2024Dave Parsons is a wildlife biologist who served from 1990 through 1999 as the Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Here he explains the challenge the Service faced in introducing the Mexican wolf, and the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, in an area where ranchers had grown accustomed to subsidized and decades-old grazing allotments in the National Forests.Narrator: Michael RobinsonTitle: Maturity and ResponsibilityDuration: 00:02:03Date: March 25, 2024Michael Robinson, a Senior Conservation Advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, has worked for many years in restoring Mexican wolves to the southwestern U.S. In this career, he has had to confront the history of over a century of our government's deliberate near-extermination of these animals. In this excerpt, he makes the case that, aside from the benefits to wolves and ecosystems that would be gained from the wolf's successful restoration, our society would be improved by accepting, repudiating and curing these past harms.