On Jan. 22, the House Natural Resources Committee overwhelmingly approved Rep. Paul Gosar’s “Enhancing Safety for Animals” bill. It would remove Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection from Mexican wolves, the smallest, shyest and most endangered wolf subspecies. 

Livestock depredation by Mexican wolves is rare. Most of it results from ranchers not deploying deterrents such as guard dogs, electric fencing, noise boxes, range riders and “fladry” (bright red flags hung every 18 to 30 inches on a wire or fence). 

Before the ESA’s enactment in 1973, Mexican wolves had been trapped, shot and poisoned to functional extinction. Only seven could be found. All Mexican wolves today (331 in the wild, 380 in captivity) are descended from those seven. So they’re blighted by inbreeding depression. 

Until 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) maintained that Mexican wolves had evaded the genetic bottleneck. It took a private citizen — Greta Anderson of the environmental group Western Watersheds Project — to discover that Mexican wolves had conjoined toe pads — “syndactyly,” a symptom of severe canid inbreeding. 

South of Interstate I-40 (slicing Arizona and New Mexico in half), Mexican wolves are classified as a “non-essential experimental population,” meaning managers can kill them if they are problematic. North of I-40, they’re captured and returned to the south.

Arizona and New Mexico profess that genetic introgression by the northern gray wolves expected to recolonize the states is a reason to keep Mexican wolves south of the I-40 artificial boundary. That’s a ruse to limit the population. 

Establishing Mexican wolves north of I-40 would be precisely what they need. A shot of northern gray wolf genes would relieve the genetic bottleneck. North of the artificial boundary, such genetic introgression was and would be completely natural. 

There’s a lesson from Lake Superior’s Isle Royale. The island’s northern gray wolves, also with syndactyly, had been just as inbred as Mexican wolves. Extirpation was imminent. But in 2018, Wayne Pacelle, now president of Animal Wellness Action, and Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, convinced the National Park Service to import 19 mainland animals, thereby relieving inbreeding depression.

Carnivore biologist David Parsons, currently of the Rewilding Institute, led Mexican wolf recovery for the USFWS from 1990 to 1999, then served on the recovery team. “We’re not paying attention to the ‘best available science’ required by the ESA,” he declares. “This artificial boundary precludes expansion. The states want a lid of 320 wolves. That’s not recovery; it’s a wild zoo.”

Parsons calls the 2010 draft recovery plan “state of the art.” It prescribed three subpopulations — one south of I-40, two north. Each would have at least 200 wolves. But then-Senator Orrin Hatch,a Utah Republican, wrote an op-ed excoriating the plan. 

So the USFWS hatched a new plan that called for only 320 Mexican wolves in one U.S. subpopulation south of I-40 and for 200 in Mexico. There’s scant public land in Mexico, and ranchers still poison wolves. “Mexico’s a death trap,” says Parsons. “It can only account for a dozen wolves at most.” 

The Enhancing Safety for Animals bill has nothing to do with animal safety. It has everything to do with irrational wolf hatred.

In New Mexico, the Catron County Commission members contend that the 162 Mexican wolves spread across the state’s 78 million acres constitute a “natural disaster,” qualifying the county for state “relief money.” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham disagrees.

“We are scared,” Catron County Commissioner Audrey McQueen told Outdoor Life magazine in 2025. “We’ve had deputies posted at the school this year so our kids can go out and play.” There is no record of a Mexican wolf attacking or even threatening a human. Poodles are more dangerous to kids.

The current recovery plan retains the artificial boundary and the single U.S. 320-wolf subpopulation. “Mexican wolves remain at risk of extinction,” remarked Parsons before Gosar introduced his Enhancing Safety for Animals bill.

If the bill becomes law, Mexican wolf extinction is guaranteed.

Ted Williams is a full-time freelance writer specializing in fish. He also serves in the Circle of Chiefs of the Outdoor Writers Association of America.