Wolf Conservation Center Blog

Letter Demands Release of Asha, Her Family

July 8, 2025 Comments Off

For immediate release: July 8, 2025 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Thirty-six conservation groups representing millions of members and supporters from across the United States today sent a formal letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that requested the immediate release of Mexican gray wolf Asha, her mate, and their five puppies. The wolf family was slated to be released on the Ladder Ranch in June but has been subjected to unexplained delay. The Caldera Pack consists of a female, named Asha in an online youth wolf-naming contest, her mate Arcadia, and their five pups Kachina, Aspen, Sage, Kai and Aala. Asha was born in the wild and became an icon in 2023 after she twice crossed the Fish and Wildlife Service’s arbitrary northern boundary for Mexican wolf movements marked by Interstate 40. She has been captured once before and released. She was captured again after her second…

WCC is Learning the Power of AudioMoths

July 8, 2025 Comments Off

Listening to the Wild: How AudioMoths Are Helping Us Understand Gulf Coast Canids and Inform Red Wolf Recovery Over several days this past month, WCC’s Conservation Scientist Colleen O’Donnell found herself wading through waist-high grass and weaving through dense branches to find the perfect trees to attach AudioMoths. What is an AudioMoth? It is a small audio recording device that allows researchers to identify and monitor all kinds of wildlife, including birds, frogs, bats, and other mammals, even humans! Species tend to occupy unique “acoustic niches” within the soundscape, which means they can be identified by the timing and frequency of their vocalizations. Right now, Colleen is gaining field experience deploying AudioMoth equipment to monitor birds and their responses to human drivers. In the near future, Colleen plans to deploy these small but mighty audio recording devices—alongside McNeese State University master’s student Tanner Broussard—across the Wolf Conservation Center’s field site in…

Bill Would Remove Federal Protections From Endangered Mexican Gray Wolves

July 2, 2025 Comments Off

TUCSON, Ariz.— U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation this week to remove the Mexican gray wolf from the endangered species list, which would effectively end recovery efforts for this unique, highly imperiled subspecies. Removing Endangered Species Act protections from Mexican wolves would stop releases of wolves from captivity to diversify the gene pool of wild wolves, end federal investigations into possible wolf predation on livestock, reduce federal funding that supports compensation for livestock losses, shut down monitoring of the wolves and remove federal prohibitions on killing them. “Bypassing the Endangered Species Act to strip all protections from beleaguered Mexican gray wolves and leave them vulnerable to Arizona’s shoot-on-sight laws would cause a massacre,” said Michael Robinson, senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Southwest’s ecology would suffer, and we’d be left with a sadder, drabber landscape if Gosar and the livestock industry’s cruel vision for wolf extermination becomes…