Feds ‘mistakenly’ kill collared and possibly pregnant Mexican gray wolf in Arizona by John Leos, April 22, 2025, azcentral
- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife authorized the “removal” of a Mexican gray wolf in eastern Arizona in connection with attacks on cattle grazing on public lands.
- The removal order specified that only a non-collared wolf should be removed and a female wolf who was possibly pregnant was to be left alone.
- Wolf advocates say the killing is the “worse possible outcome” and could destabilize the pack, part of an experimental population in Greenlee County.
A federal wildlife agency “mistakenly” killed an endangered and possibly pregnant breeding-age Mexican gray wolf in Greenlee County, according to a memo from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The killing occurred after officials issued a lethal removal order for an uncollared wolf from the Bear Canyon wolf pack on April 7 in response to a series of attacks on livestock grazing on public land.
The order, signed by Brady McGee, the Mexican wolf coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, authorized the USDA’s Wildlife Services to kill one uncollared wolf from the pack, but preserve the breeding female wolf, known as AF1823, who was wearing a nonfunctioning radio collar.
“It is our intent not to remove the breeding female (wearing a nonfunctioning radio collar) who will likely whelp a new litter of pups soon,” stated the order.
Despite this, the female wolf was killed on April 14, according to a two-sentence outcome memo:
“During efforts to fulfill this removal order, AF1823 was mistakenly lethally removed on April 14, 2025. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined to close this removal order.”
I do not believe it was a mistake. Welcome to Orange Nazi-ville where anything goes.
USDA Wildlife Services did not immediately respond to questions regarding the incident. U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials referred questions to the original order and declined to answer whether the incident was under investigation.
The killing of the seven-year-old female wolf has outraged advocacy groups, who are calling for accountability for the agencies that manage the endangered wolves.
“You can’t just make a mistake when you’re dealing with an endangered species. I mean, these are the people we trust to be managing our wolves,” said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project, a wildlife advocacy group. “They were taking a really big chance in authorizing this removal, and this is the worst possible outcome for this family of wolves.”
Government authorized to kill endangered wolf
Wolves in the Bear Canyon pack are members of the experimental, nonessential population of endangered Mexican gray wolves living in Arizona and New Mexico. While it is illegal for the public to kill a Mexican wolf, their designation as nonessential authorizes government agencies to trap, harass and kill “problem” wolves that prey on livestock.
The Bear Canyon pack consists of seven wolves living in rugged, remote terrain in Greenlee County. Since 2024, the wolves have been suspected and confirmed to have preyed on livestock grazing on public land in the area, including four confirmed depredation incidents in 2025.
According to the removal order, wildlife managers and ranchers had taken preventative measures to deter the wolves. These measures included hazing activities and establishing alternative food caches to lure the wolves away from livestock, which proved ineffective and unsustainable.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife authorized the USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service-Wildlife Services personnel to conduct the killing of a single uncollared wolf to manage the conflict situation, but noted specifically that the collared, alpha members of the pack should not be targeted.
After the killing of the collared female wolf on April 14, U.S. Fish and Wildlife closed the removal order.
“We don’t think that lethal control should be ordered for depredations taking place on public lands, because public lands are wildlife habitat. Wildlife acting like wild animals should be expected,” said Anderson.ya, but, our selfish species thinks the world belongs only to us, and refuses to see how vital wolves are to our survival, and to keeping other species healthy. The more religious, the more we think God will fix all the ills we create because of our idiocy, greed and over breeding, which is magical buffoonery thinking. We are responsible, only we are, not any god or angel or pope up there in the climate change ravaged and polluted sky.
“You can’t expect wild animals not to take advantage of easy prey in their habitat,” Anderson said. “Punishing them for eating the food that’s readily available is fundamentally unfair, both to the individual wolves but also to the American public that wants to see wolves recovered.”
It is unclear whether other management actions, like nonlethal capture or relocation, were considered when making this decision, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife did not respond to questions from The Republic.
Breeding wolves is essential to recovery
The Mexican gray wolf, or lobo, is a smaller and genetically distinct subspecies of gray wolf that has been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 1976, following the near eradication of the species for livestock predator control. According to a 2024 population survey, at least 286 wolves were living in Arizona and New Mexico.
The existing population of Mexican wolves is all descended from seven surviving wolves used in a binational captive breeding program in the 1980s and 1990s. The small genetic pool makes the wolves vulnerable to issues caused by inbreeding, and highlights the importance of preserving breeding adult wolves to increase genetic diversity, advocates say.
The killed female wolf AF1823, named Asiza by schoolchildren in Arizona, was 7 years old and considered the matriarch of the Bear Canyon Pack. According to wildlife advocates, the death could upend the highly social and interdependent structure of the wolf pack.Fuck, our species needs to wipe itself out fast, or there will be nothing left on this raped earth!
“The killing of Asiza is extremely upsetting, both for her family and for lobo supporters across the country,” said Regan Downey, Wolf Conservation Center director of education, in a news release. “Her death endangers the Bear Canyon pack’s survival; research shows that killing a breeding female can destabilize the pack and increase the likelihood of future conflicts.”
As wolf advocacy groups call for transparency and accountability from the federal agencies, the government has not provided any details surrounding the incident outside of the outcome memo posted publicly online.
“The killing of this breeding female is tragic news for the recovery of Mexican wolves,” said Andrea Zaccardi, carnivore conservation legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a news release.
“While the agencies claim that killing this female was a mistake, they’re staying silent on the details as to how such an egregious error was made and how they’ll ensure mistakes like this won’t be repeated,” Zaccardi said. “We need to know why this killing occurred and how they’ll make sure it never happens again.”
@critterlover27.bsky.social:
Again, experiencing feelings of outrage & embarrassment from being of the human species…
@race2extinct.bsky.social:
It never ends.
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New Results Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Wolf [Mahihkan (Cree), Tha (Denesuline), Amaruk (Inuktitut), Canis lupus] Occurrences on the Summer Range of the Eastern Migratory Cape Churchill Caribou Population in the Hudson Bay Lowlands of Manitoba by R.K. Brook, K.E Harris, D.A. Clark, C. Lochansky, J.A. Colpitts, April 18, 2205, bioRxiv
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.11.648486
This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?].
Abstract
Wolves (Canis lupus) function as a top predator across diverse ecosystems including the sub-arctic, and they have been managed in often controversial ways. Communities and scientists are increasingly supporting minimally invasive research and monitoring, including using trail cameras. We employed a network of 15 Reconyx trail cameras at three monitoring areas aimed at detecting the spatial and temporal aspects of wolf occurrences within the summer range of Eastern Migratory Cape Churchill caribou in Wapusk National Park in the Hudson Bay Lowlands of Manitoba, Canada from 2013-2021. In this first peer-reviewed quantitative study of wolves in the region, we found that wolves detection events were generally consistent across years. Wolf distribution was consistently positively skewed toward the southern part of the caribou summer range in all years. Wolves experienced extreme environmental conditions, with a 60°C range in temperature, from a low of −32°C in winter to a high of +28°C in summer and an annual change in day length of >11 hours between summer and winter. Wolves occurred most commonly in spring and summer and occurred at equal frequency during night and day overall but selected for nighttime in September, October, and November as day length shortened dramatically.
Dr Brook et al’s wolf study prepting in PDF
Ryan Brook, PhD. Chairman of the Boar @ryankbrook.bsky.social:
One unnamed co-author didn’t like my acknowledgement to Farley Mowat but ‘Never Cry Wolf’ totally changed my life.Mine too. It helped me stay alive. And his other books. As a child, I grew up in Quebec with a dog that was half wolf. Best guard dog and friend ever. Viciously loving, trustworthy and kind. I am sure I would have committed suicide after the rapes, if not for that wolf-dog. I often see wolves in the wild where I walk; I acutely aware of them and they of me. Never have I been afraid of them; they are kin and we idiot humans mercilessly and cruelly shoot them en mass from choppers in Canada (under the guise of protecting caribou but really to enable industry to destroy more and more of their habitat, all in the name of greed, god and ego – too many of us).