Imagine hiking in the Pecos Wilderness, the Valles Caldera or the mountains near Chama and hearing the howl of a gray wolf on the summer wind. While there are Mexican wolves in southern New Mexico, could we also have their northern cousins in the high cold mountains of northern New Mexico? Yes, we could, and we likely will in the next decade or so.
New Mexico has no plans to reintroduce gray wolves (Canis lupus irremotus) to our state and federal officials likewise consider New Mexico to be outside of this species’ range. There is an active state and federal program to reintroduce Mexican wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) in southern and western New Mexico. But here we’re talking about northern gray wolves coming into New Mexico.
Wolf supporters placed a ballot proposition on the Colorado general election ballot in 2020. The public was asked if they supported allowing northern gray wolves to establish themselves in Colorado. The ballot proposition passed in November 2020 and the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department was charged with developing a plan for wolf reintroduction in Colorado.
It should be noted that the red/blue split in Colorado was evident in the voting results in the Wolf proposition. Rural voters tended to vote against wolf reintroduction while urban voters on the Front Range largely voted in favor. (Urban voters outnumber rural voters in Colorado.) Yet the wolves will inhabit the areas where many people voted against their reintroduction.
The cattle industry extirpated wolves in Colorado in the 1940s with the help of the federal government. This was era when predators were being persecuted throughout the West and the ranching industry was establishing a dominant position in Western wildlife and economic policy. Grizzly bears were destroyed in Colorado and New Mexico in the 1930s, also by the ranching industry. Today ranchers still kill wolves, coyotes, and bears on public and private lands where ranchers run cattle. Ranchers say wolves kill their cattle and programs to compensate ranchers for wolf killed cattle exist throughout the northern Rockies where wolves have been spreading for the last twenty years. The Colorado Wolf Restoration Management Plan also has provisions to compensate the cattle industry for cows lost to wolves.
Wolves are a keystone species, meaning they play a central ecological role in the areas where they live. They prey on rodents, coyotes, elk, and deer. They affect the vegetation like willows along streams by keeping elk and deer herds wary and on the move. They don’t kill humans and they kill livestock sometimes.
Gray wolves have spread from Yellowstone National Park after their reintroduction there in 1995. Gray wolves have established packs as far west as Oregon and northern California. They are widespread in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming where they are not protected under the endangered species act (for political reasons) and these state’s officals are encouraging the public to kill most of the wolf population. Outside of the three northern Rockies states, gray wolves are on the endangered species list, and it is illegal to kill them.
Gray wolves have been establishing themselves in northern Colorado from offspring of southern Wyoming packs. In Jackson County, Colorado numerous wolves have been sited and collared with GPS collars. State officials expect this population to spread southward and they will be allowed to under Colorado law. State agents will collar some pack members to monitor their dispersal.
Gray wolves inhabit a wide range of environmental conditions, but they seem to prefer mountain country. The Wyoming wolves could easily move south through various Colorado mountain chains and eventually find themselves in the San Juan Mountains where the half million-acre Weminuchi Wilderness area could provide prime habitat. This is Colorado’s largest wilderness area and though it has some domestic cattle and sheep, it would be a low conflict zone for wolves. Here they could eat elk, bighorn sheep, deer and mice.
From the Weminuchi, wolves could spread into the connected 160,000-acre South San Juan Wilderness area which extends into New Mexico as the 20,000-acre Cruces Basin Wilderness. It would be an easy hop for the wolves to move to the Jemez Mountains directly to the south of the continental divide country of the Chama River. Here they would probably be welcomed by the National Park Service at the Valles Caldera National Preserve.
Likewise, wolves in Colorado could come down the middle of Colorado and work their way to the northern Sangre de Cristo near Buena Vista then continue south into northern New Mexico’s Valle Vidal and the 225,000-acre Pecos Wilderness area. All these areas would provide suitable habitat for gray wolves and their dispersal to northern New Mexico would only be hindered by officials and members of the public in Colorado over the next decade.
Some people say gray wolves never lived in northern New Mexico. While it is hard to know what animals were here before Europeans arrived, we know that wolves were common in northern New Mexico by the accounts of early wildlife experts like Ernest Thomas Seton.
An extinct species of wolf called the Southern Rocky Mountain wolf (Canis lupus youngi) lived from southern Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Nevada up until 1935 when the last one was killed.
How did the Southern Rocky Mountain wolf interact with northern gray wolves? Did they share habitat? How did they blend with the Mexican wolf? How far south did the gray wolf range after the close of the Pleistocene? How did the Anasazi interact with the wolf? These questions haunt the canyons and mountains of our region.
I hope New Mexicans will welcome gray wolves into our mountains soon. With the ranching industry dying away and increasing interest in the outdoors, perhaps we can develop a plan to allow gray wolves into New Mexico peacefully and enjoy their howls and ecological benefits well into the future.
Tom Ribe
