The return of the Mexican wolf

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 29th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Before we continue this morning, I’ve got a quick note for anyone interested in exploring a career change…this Friday is the application deadline for our 2026 WORLD Journalism Institute Mid-Career course.

We’re looking for Christians in their mid-thirties and older, wanting to hone their reporting and writing skills while engaging their faith. The course features instruction in boots-on-the-ground reporting, and the opportunity to learn from WORLD reporters and editors.

The scholarship-funded training will be held in Louisville, Kentucky. It runs January 4th to January 10th. Again, the deadline to apply is this Friday, October 31st​.

I can attest that it’s an intense week but so impactful. My classmates –go Class of 2023!-- were-are- people of deep faith that I got to work alongside… deep-diving on the hows and grappling with the whys of the practice of journalism. I haven’t had any other experience quite like it. So–get on it!

For more information or to submit the online application, visit wji.world.

EICHER: Another of our Midcareer graduates is WORLD reporter Kim Henderson. Today she takes us to New Mexico for the first of a two-part story about a long-vanished voice in the American Southwest—and the people working to bring it back.

SOUND: [Sound of wolf howl]

KIM HENDERSON: The howl of a Mexican wolf was once a common sound in the southwestern United States. But conflict with humans brought them to near extinction by the 1970s.

These days the best place to see Mexican wolves is somewhere like this, the Albuquerque BioPark Zoo.

AUDIO: [Moms and kids talk at exhibit]

There’s a special Mexican wolf exhibit here. The wolves are in a forest-like habitat behind a tall privacy fence with windows. A zoo educator explains why.

ROBERT: You have to actually look for them. It's less obtrusive the way it's set up.

Kids love it. This group has managed to spot a wolf.

SOUND: [Kids howling at wolf]

The kids are howling at him.

Zoos across the United States maintain a captive population of some 350 Mexican wolves. That’s part of the work of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. For more than a quarter of a century now, that agency has worked to increase the number of Mexican wolves. It’s called a recovery program. And it costs more than 5 million dollars a year to run it.

But there’s a problem with the wolves—inbreeding.

BIRD: The challenge is that we saved this animal from a very small number of surviving members. There were about seven in the wild when they were all brought back into captivity, which means a very narrow genetic print.

That’s Bryan Bird. He’s a wolf advocate with a group called Defenders of Wildlife. He says the only way to save the wolves for the long run is by spreading their genetic material beyond zoos and breeding facilities.

BIRD: We need to get it in the wild. And so the only way to do that is to release these animals into the wild.

And that’s what they’ve done. The latest survey shows 286 Mexican wolves living wild and free in Arizona and New Mexico.

But not everyone rolls out the red carpet for wolves.

NEWS CLIP: [NEWS CLIP]

Cattle ranchers have an ongoing conflict with these apex predators. So do other residents who are fearful of wolves attacking pets and people.

It makes you wonder, is it really important to have wolves in the landscape?

Leia Barnett says yes, wolves are very important.

BARNETT: They are considered what we call a keystone species, which means in an ecosystem, they play a key role in maintaining the function of that ecosystem.

Barnett works for the environmental group, WildEarth Guardians. She says the wolves keep unglulates—elk and deer—on the move. That’s important for wetland habitats.

BARNETT: If ungulates don't have any prey, they'll just stand near the water, in the water, eating all of the aquatic plants.

In places where natural predators like wolves prey on elk, the wetlands habitat has a chance to vegetate. Bushes and trees grow. Things that provide shade.

BARNETT: Which keeps the water cool, which trout need cold water to reproduce and live in, along with other aquatic species. So it's these whole system effects like that . . .

A “whole system effect” obviously designed by God.

NOWICKI: Let's just walk around the side of this dam. I think this is the easier way to go over here . . .

Brian Nowicki works with the Center for Biological Diversity.

NOWICKI: We're looking at the Sandia Mountains, and that's the Sandia peak right up there . . .

Nowicki also points out the top boundary of the Mexican wolf experimental population area—Interstate 40. Keeping wolves within a certain range is hard, especially now that their numbers are growing. But Nowicki believes strongly that Mexican wolves need room to thrive.

NOWICKI: We've decided as a people, as a country, that we're not going to let species go extinct. In order to have them come back, you have to provide enough space and enough opening so that wolves can be wolves.

And that naturally leads to conflict with ranchers operating within that space—wild, forested lands. In many cases, it’s federal land. Ranchers lease thousands of acres from the government.

Nowicki says the leases are part of the problem. They were made under decades-old laws.

NOWICKI: …ideologies that we developed back in the 60s or earlier, we want to modernize our thinking. We want to think in terms of ecosystems, and we want to think in terms of the kind of level of science and landscape scales that we're now able to look at.

But wolf advocates and ranchers look through very different lenses. And the conflict is only heating up.

In August, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired a game commissioner for failing to disclose that she’d worked with ranchers on a wolf media campaign. More about that tomorrow.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

HOST: To read the full print feature story on Mexican wolves, look for the November issue of WORLD Magazine...and we’ll post a link to the digital version of the story in the transcript of this episode.

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