A seasoned naturalist once told me he had seen two gray wolves drinking from a pond in the Valles Caldera National Preserve in the early 2000s. Filled with doubt, I wondered if the animals were large coyotes or wolf/dog hybrids. After all wolves had been exterminated in Colorado and New Mexico in the 1930s. Yet I wondered, could wolves come back to New Mexico on their own? The answer is clearly yes, we could soon see gray wolves in northern New Mexico.
Up until the 1930s, New Mexico had both grizzly bears and wolves living in the valleys and mountains throughout the state. Both grizzlies and wolves had Mexican subspecies in the southern part of the state that ranged from Old Mexico and Arizona. In the northern mountains, gray wolves and the grizzlies familiar in northern Rockies roamed the South San Juan Mountains, the Sangre de Cristo and the Jemez among other places. The Mexican grizzly went extinct in the 1960s, Mexican wolves are hanging on by a thread, and no known wolves or grizzly have been in northern New Mexico since 1938.
Wolves have been ranging around the United States with surprising freedom over the last decade. Wolves from a strong population in Canada have long roamed into the northern states. Wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and have populated the park and nearby mountains. Radio-collared by researchers, a wolf left the Yellowstone area and ranged into western Oregon and northern California half a decade ago. Another came down to the Grand Canyon. These wolves were the first to visit these areas in a century.
In the 2020 election, Colorado residents voted to allow wolves to be reintroduced into Colorado. By a narrow margin, voters directed the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to develop a plan to reestablish a self-sustaining wolf population by 2023. Wolves from Wyoming had been crossing into Colorado for years, but now the state will encourage their spread and the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado are a prime focus for reintroduction because of the sheer size of the Weminuche Wilderness (500,000 acres) that spans the southern reaches of the mountains and adjoins the South San Juan Wilderness area.
The 159,000-acre South San Juan Wilderness area offers a bridge of land into northern New Mexico. (The last grizzly bear was killed in Colorado in 1979 here.) In New Mexico, the South San Juan Mountains tower above Chama then become low rounded mountains in the Canjilon country, wild and largely free of roads. Those mountains flow into the Colorado Plateau country of Abiquiu directly north of the Jemez Mountains. Here wolves would find an easy area of expansion south into large areas of wild country in high northern New Mexico.
Except that many cattle ranchers loath wolves and have been illegally killing Mexican wolves in southern New Mexico since the animals were reintroduced under the Endangered Species Act in the Gila and White Mountains in 1998. Ranchers have exterminated millions of coyotes and bears and wolves over the last century throughout the West. Because cowboys can still get leases to run cattle on national forest land – even in wilderness areas – they will resist any movement of wolves into public lands in New Mexico.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that the public in both Colorado and New Mexico generally supports predators and the ranching industry is slowly fading away as public land ranchers age out and younger people don’t follow them into the economically difficult business. Climate change is further stressing the ranching industry.
Wolves need large areas of wild land without busy highways and with plenty small mammals, deer and elk. New Mexico offers these qualities in many places in northern New Mexico. We are fast becoming one of the most environmentally progressive states, with advanced energy policies and a rapid turn toward outdoor recreation as an economic driver. Having wolves in our mountains can only add to the allure and mystique of wild New Mexico
Let’s hope our state government officially welcomes gray wolves to the state once they expand their range in Colorado. In Colorado, the state used a voter initiative to legalize their reintroduction. New Mexico doesn’t have voter initiatives, but we have a forward-looking legislature that could want to hear the howl of wolves in the Pecos Wilderness someday.
