After rising to a record 110, count of Mexican wolves has dropped to 97 in Southwest

The Arizona Republic (Original) Posted February 18, 2016 by Brandon Loomis

Illegal shootings are suspected in the Mexican wolf downturn.

A deadly year for endangered Mexican gray wolves in the southwestern U.S. has left just 50 roaming Arizona forests and 97 total in the wild, ending several years of healthy population gains.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Arizona Game and Fish Department documented 13 wolf deaths and 11 wolves missing and "fate unknown" through the end of 2015, the agencies announced Thursday.

The minimum population estimate of 97 wolves between eastern Arizona and western New Mexico represents a loss of 13 from 2014, when wolf managers announced a record-high wild population since reintroduction from captivity began in 1998.

Biologists conducting the survey last month said the losses included an unprecedented number of illegal shootings, though officials said they could not confirm the number until they get necropsy results from a federal laboratory in Ashland, Ore.

Also weighing on the population in 2015 was a pup survival rate of just 55 percent after remarkable survival of 86 percent the previous year.

"These latest population numbers demonstrate that we still have more work to do in stabilizing this experimental population and maximizing its anticipated contribution to Mexican wolf recovery," Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle said in a prepared statement.

The population was designated "experimental" under the Endangered Species Act before captive-bred wolves were released. The designation gives authorities flexibility to kill or remove wolves that prey on livestock while still pursuing its ultimate recovery in the wild.

The known wolf deaths are counted against the 2015 population, and do not include two accidental deaths of wolves after agents darted them to affix tracking collars last month.

"It's alarming," said Center for Biological Diversity wolf specialist Michael Robinson, who earlier this winter had expected the count to reveal a new record high.

The losses, both to guns and to reduced pup survival, illustrate two significant problems with the recovery program, he said.

Illegal shootings are a perennial problem — there were five confirmed in 2014 — and investigations rarely nab poachers or lead to charges. Then there is the pup survival issue, which Robinson attributes partly to a lack of genetic variation in a population that at one point was down to seven in captivity.

Robinson and other activists have called for more releases from the captive-bred population, which have stalled in recent years as managers relied on wild pack reproduction.

Releases are controversial because some fear naive wolves let loose in the wild may get into more trouble. The agencies are considering a releases of captive-born pups into wild litters, where wild mother wolves have been shown to rear them.

The 11 wolves that have gone missing also are cause for concern, Robinson said.

"The vast majority of those animals (each year) are never seen again," he said.

Arizona Game and Fish has partnered with the federal recovery program since it began, and on Thursday the agency's assistant director of wildlife management said the 2015 annual count "is a concern, but not a signal that the program is unsuccessful."

"Wildlife populations vary on an annual basis," Game and Fish's Jim deVos said, "so the decline in Mexican wolves counted this year is not out of character."