Recovery of wolves in the wild accelerated at an astonishing rate in 2022, with the population growing from 196 to at least 241 wolves, with 105 counted in Arizona and 136 counted in New Mexico.

Endangered Mexican gray wolves are making more strides, as more breeding pairs and pups have been documented since reintroduction efforts began in the southwestern U.S. more than two decades ago, federal wildlife managers said Tuesday.

On a frigid morning in late January, biologists set out in a helicopter to begin the annual Mexican wolf population count with hopes of finding at least one more wolf than last year. Their painstaking work helps identify the number of wolves in Arizona and New Mexico and is vital to the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program that began 25 years ago when the animals were nearly extinct. 

An environmental group on Monday petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help reintroduce the jaguar to the Southwest, where it once roamed for hundreds of thousands of years before being whittled down to just one of the big cats known to survive in the region.

The latest survey shows another increase in the population of the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, according to authorities.

The Center for Biological Diversity has achieved its high profile in part through its litigation-based approach to conservation. Since July 1, for example, the center has filed 12 lawsuits to prevent development around the country that it contends would threaten various endangered species.

Macho B is gone, but his spirit may live on in a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Silver City, N.M.-based Center for Biological Diversity on July 26 took its first steps toward a lawsuit against the federal agency for issuing a permit to the Arizona Game & Fish Department that it said could lead to the incidental capture and death of other wild jaguars.

Mexican gray wolves no longer will be subject to the "three strikes and you're out" rule, thanks to a settlement reached between environmental groups and the federal government. The informal rule went by the bureaucratic sounding name of standard operating procedure 13 (SOP 13), which allowed wolves to be removed from the wild for attacking and killing livestock three times within a year.