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Major Milestone for Mexican Wolves!
Under mounting legal pressure from Defenders of Wildlife and our allies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed in November 2009 to end a "three strikes and you're out" policy that has frustrated efforts to rescue endangered Mexican gray wolves from extinction in the wild.
With just 52 Mexican gray wolves in the wilds of Arizona and New Mexico at last count, these wolves (also called lobos) remain one of the most endangered animals in North America.
The heavy-handed "three strikes" policy has been hobbling wolf recovery efforts for years by requiring that any wolf implicated in three livestock losses in one year be shot or trapped, without regard to its genetic importance or the precarious state of the population. This rigid policy claimed the lives of 11wolves and sent many more back to captivity, seriously undermining efforts to recover one of the most endangered animals in America and restore an important part of Southwest ecosystems.
In response to the efforts of Defenders and our partners, FWS officials also agreed to resume key leadership responsibilities in the lobo reintroduction effort, ending the unsuccessful multi-agency leadership arrangement that has been in place in recent years.
This major course correction means that the FWS -- with a legal mandate and responsibility to recover Mexican wolves -- is once again calling the shots. The FWS will continue to seek advice from other agencies and stakeholders, but Mexican wolf recovery will no longer be secondary to other agencies' goals, or to placating vocal anti-wolf interests.
Thanks to the thousands of local activists who took action to build public opposition to the ill-conceived "three strikes" policy and the hundreds of people who made donations to support our fight in the courts, our wild lobos now have a real chance at surviving and thriving in the American Southwest.
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Find out more about our efforts to restore wolves to the American southwest.
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