Wolf Nation

by Brenda Peterson

  It’s a sound that so few people ever get to hear, especially in the wild, which is where these Mexican gray wolves are now at last headed. The wolf family will be transported by plane to Phoenix, then driven in a van all night to Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch in New Mexico, near the Gila National Forest, the sixth-largest national forest in the United States. The Gila Wilderness was the first designated wilderness reservation, in 1924. The transport and journey to New Mexico will be difficult; if it goes off without incident, the Mexican wolf family will spend the next three months in the ranch’s large canyon enclosure, acclimating to the high desert and arid climate of their ancestors.

  “Quickly,” Diane tells me and the photographer, Annie Marie Musselman. “You don’t want to miss this!”

  Annie heads into the sanctuary, heavy burdened with cameras, and I go into the office, where I will watch the wolves as I have before, via live remote cameras. Very few of the staff are allowed to assist with the delicate and skilled work of capturing the five members of this Mexican wolf family. Dr. Jerry Brown, the Wolf Haven vet of thirty years; Pamela Maciel, the Mexican wolf biologist; and Wendy Spencer are among the other animal care staff in the careful operation. All are highly trained in what’s called a “catch-up” and final medical exam of the wolves.

  One might imagine catching wolves to be a risky and fearsome job. Images of menacing growls, gnashing fangs, all the Discovery channel documentaries of vicious wolves attacking prey come to mind. But this catch-up is more like a well-choreographed dance or mime. Everyone in the enclosure is silent. When absolutely necessary, only Wendy speaks sotto voce.

  The father wolf, Brother, and his yearling pups were born at Wolf Haven, and this is the first time any of them will ever leave their sanctuary. When he sees the crates, one yearling jumps atop the reinforced plastic kennel and uses it like a launching pad to leap into space and crash down on the forest floor. The pups have often played a kind of how-many-wolves-fit-on-the-roof-of-their-wooden-den-box. Answer: all five, including the parents. But this is a morning unlike any other in the pups’ lives. The close-knit family takes its cue from the matriarch, Hopa.

  “She’s calm, but really terrified,” Gallegos tells me. “She’s poised like the family matriarch that she is, but she’s also shaking.” Gallegos is still whispering, even though we are in the office. Any stereotype of ferocious wolf attacks fades when we witness their fear. It’s a reminder that wild wolves are instinctively very wary of humans and spend most of their time in the wild trying to avoid or escape our attention.

  Quietly Gallegos explains what’s happening on the screen with six people, each carrying a lightweight, four-foot-long aluminum pole with a padded Y at the end. “With each wolf, they’ll slide that Y-pole and gently put pressure on the neck and haunches. We don’t use the traditional catch poll with its lasso or rope. That can injure the wolves as they race away and then swing from their necks on the catch pole. Instead, we were trained by Dr. Mark Johnson, the wildlife vet for the Yellowstone wolves, to use this efficient but light pressure so as not to stress the animal.”

  Dr. Johnson visits Wolf Haven yearly for wildlife-handling classes offered to wildlife agency personal and other federal, state, and tribal wildlife professionals. Others who take the class are zoo and sanctuary employees and volunteers, animal control officers, and university students. Dr. Johnson’s philosophy is visionary and compassionate. “There is no room for ego when handling animals,” he writes. When catching-up a feral dog or a captive wolf, he asks wildlife handlers to use this as an opportunity to “explore our connection with all things and to explore who we are as a person. This is a profound opportunity… exhilarating, sacred, and sad.”

  It is a profound experience, even to watch over remote cameras, as the highly trained wildlife handlers stand in a silent line waiting to catch-up the next wolf, a yearling. None of the staff seem nervous or tense even though they are inside a wild wolf enclosure.

  “No, the people are not frightened,” Gallegos nods. “They’ve all been well trained. It’s the wolves who are afraid.” We watch the action a few more minutes before she adds, “The wolves are now hunkered down, frozen in fear. But we keep it really calm, and animals get used to seeing us at least every year when we do the medical exams and vaccinations.” Gallegos pauses and adds, “Like Lorenzo, the very first animal catch-up that I was involved in. As soon as we walked in with our Y-poles, the wolf ran into the subenclosure, and it was done. Because he recognized, ‘Oh, I know what I need to do here.’”

  “The catch-up is very low stress. It’s quick.” Gallegos explains. “It’s like the techniques used in agriculture when a shepherd shears sheep. If you can make it a positive experience for that ram, then the next time you do it, the animals are not stressed out.”

  “Like Temple Grandin inventing those hug boxes for cows,” I nod.

  Grandin, a high-functioning autistic author and inventor, revolutionized the cattle industry by designing more humane wooden chutes that gently squeeze cattle into long, narrow corrals. The chutes actually calm the cows, much in the same way Grandin learned to soothe her own autistic anxiety by inventing a hug box for herself. Grandin’s groundbreaking research has radically changed animal science, and her animal welfare strategies now set the standard for the cattle industry. Grandin’s many books explain how animals think in pictures, like herself and many other autistic people. What pictures must now be fleeting through these wolves’ minds as they await catch-up?

  Gazing into the grainy remote camera screens, it looks like everyone is silently moving underwater. Throughout the wolf family’s enclosure and the prerelease area the staff has hung huge sheets of canvas. These brown sheets easily herd the wolf family together, much the way ranchers use fladry on their fences to ward off wild wolves. For some unknown reason, wolves will avoid those flapping red flags or the canvas drapes.

  The wildlife staff handle each animal one at a time, and usually only one or two people restrain the animal. Whether it’s some instinctive memory of being carried by the scruff of the neck by a trusted mother or the experience of being captured once a year for medical exams, the wolves are gently directed toward the safety of their crates, which become instant dens.

  The three yearlings and their father, Brother, are all quickly crated. Not a howl, not a moan or a whine. The wolves are as mute as the people. Dr. Brown is quickly giving each wolf in the family a check-up. All looks good to go, he nods.

  “It’s fast and efficient,” Gallegos murmurs as we watch. “Because they’re going to endure so much after this. Such a long trip.”

  “Are they tranquilized?”

  “No,” she replies firmly, “they can’t be. We don’t usually tranquilize our animals unless we absolutely have to. To fly in a plane tranquilized could be really dangerous. You don’t want them in cargo, unmonitored, choking. You want them to stay awake. It’s a two-hour flight and good, smooth weather, so we hope it will all go well.”

  Still in the sanctuary, the mother wolf, Hopa, has denned up. She is the last to be shepherded into her crate. I watch, transfixed, as Spencer almost tenderly reaches into the den with her Y-pole. The mother wolf instantly hunkers down at the touch of the Y-pole on her neck. Quickly, as someone else rests the Y-pole on the mother wolf’s haunches, Wendy secures a blue head cover over her face for safety. Covering their eyes and head always quietens wild animals, like horses or animals injured on the road. Something about not being able to see immediately reassures the animal. Safely muzzled, Hopa is lifted into the comfort of her own crate. All five of the family are now ready to go to the airport. The whole catch-up of the wolf family has taken just one hour. Smiling and relieved, the Wolf Haven staff emerge from the sanctuary, followed by Wendy driving the van. Inside, the wolves, each in their own crate, are utterly still.

  Annie’s photos and videos are all we see now on the screen. The most striking portrait of all is the mother wolf, an image I’ll never forget: crouched at the very back of he
r crate, as if to bury herself in the blonde straw, she gazes out, her ears perked to fathom each voice or strange sound; her golden eyes wide, wary, preternaturally focused; her distinctive rust- and black-colored fur dense and beautiful. But her dripping black nose betrays her terror. Her flanks are trembling. But she doesn’t move or thrash or try to escape. She looks hypervigilant but eerily calm at the same time. After all, she has a family to protect from whatever strange journey is being asked of her—nothing less than leading her pups and her mate into the complete unknown. The recovery and resurrection of an entire species await her. When I study this matriarch’s face I read both fear and courage. I’m reminded of the adage that, in humans, the bravest of us are those who actually feel fear and yet still perform some perilous feat.

  This wolf family must now travel to New Mexico and beyond into unfamiliar wilderness that has always been hostile to wolves. They may lack the skills to survive in wild, rugged terrain with not a lot of prey. If they kill livestock, Mexican ranchers might regress to their history of hunting wolves. It is difficult to think of Hopa, and her mate, Brother, and their yearling pups being so vulnerable to hostile forces as they return to repopulate their native territory. But it is vital if their species is to again take a foothold in Mexico and the American Southwest. As I stand a little distance from the white van that now holds the fate of this wolf family in their five crates, I can’t help but feel both exuberant and anxious.

  The amiable Wolf Haven vet, Dr. Brown, notes that all the wolves are healthy. “They all handled it pretty good,” he says, “not a lot of jumping around and craziness.” He has drawn blood from the matriarch to discover if she is perhaps pregnant.

  Pamela Maciel, reports, “Now the wolves are very calm, because they are so afraid. Terrified. Trembling. It’s like they just completely freeze.”

  I don’t ask anyone whether they are sad to see this wolf family leave their haven. It’s obvious from their faces.

  There are still two other Mexican wolf families left in Wolf Haven’s sanctuary. They too are part of the Species Survival Plan and await possible release, perhaps even as early as next year. “It’s so exciting,” says one of the Wolf Haven staff. “They will at last be wild and back where they belong.”

  I stand a little distance from the van that will carry this wolf family to the airport. Inside my jacket I reach for the wolf necklace that has accompanied me on all my wolf research trips. The silver is cool, but the wolf teeth are warm and sharp against my fingers. These are Mexican wolf teeth. After a century they seem almost alive again.

  THERE ARE TOO MANY WOLVES to fit on one Alaska airlines flight. Moving a whole family group is very different from moving just one animal. So they fly on two planes. One wonders what Phoenix-bound passengers might think if they had any idea that wolves are also aboard their airplane.

  “Typically we drive,” Gallegos explains. “But when it’s this long a trip—twenty-eight hours—it’s better for the animals to fly.”

  Wendy sends a Facebook photo from the Alaska Airlines cargo area where one large metal cart now holds all five of the crates with the wolf family. In the photo Wendy looks both happy and yet also alert as she poses with an airlines employee. So far, so good.

  Imagine what it must be like for these animals who have always known only the quiet and calm life of family and sanctuary to suddenly hear the rumble of SUV tires along a busy freeway, the scream of jets at the airport, the sensory overload of what must seem like multitudes of people jabbering, and the terrifying roar of a jet engine and perhaps even a little turbulence as they fly midair. What does the grease and jet fuel smell like to them? Can they even begin to make sense of the scent of so many passengers? In the cargo hold, which is unregulated and always icy cold, the only thing familiar now is family, the scent and sound of one another in nearby crates.

  For the next twenty-four hours those of us who know the importance of this Mexican wolf transport, including the thousands following it on the Wolf Haven Facebook page, will anxiously await word of the wolf family’s journey. Radio silence. Then the next day an email from Spencer: “Transport went as smoothly as we could have hoped for (though, no doubt, the wolves were terrified).”

  When they opened the crates at 4 A.M. at Ladder Ranch after the all-night transport the father, Brother, and the pups were too afraid to emerge. But the mother, Hopa, raced right out of her crate and into her new life. Normally Spencer would have let the other wolves emerge on their own. But after twenty-eight hours she needed to make sure Brother and the three yearlings were unharmed by the journey and could move easily. “They seemed okay,” she wrote, “if a bit stiff. We had to take the top off the crates and literally gently dump them out.”

  The next morning Spencer and Chris Wiese, who manages the wolf-release program at Turner’s Ladder Ranch, drove to the blind to better observe the wolf family. Hidden, Spencer and Wiese could watch the wolf family explore this new canyon land of mountains, prickly sagebrush, hot springs, and wide, semidesert mesas. Once back in the wild, these Mexican wolves may travel forty miles a day at about thirty-five miles an hour. They can swim as much as fifty miles. With such an expanse of territory to reclaim, the wolves can roam together in their trademark single-file line, moving in what’s called a “harmonic gait.” The back paws fall exactly where the front paws have already landed, giving their movement a “rhythmic job that conserves energy.”

  “We saw them eating, drinking, chasing ravens, and even snoozing. They looked very much at home—much more so than in the Evergreens of Washington. It was like they had been here their entire lives,” Spencer told me happily. While Spencer and Wiese observed the wolf family in their new habitat, several golden eagles circled above. “We should all feel so proud and honored to be a part of something so much bigger than ourselves.”

  NEWS OF CROSS-FOSTERING SUCCESS soon buoyed hopes for the recovery of Mexican gray wolves in America’s Southwest: in May of 2016 the USFWS placed two captive-born, nine-day-old wolves—nicknamed Lindbergh and Vida—into a wild den in New Mexico. The wild mother wolf had her own litter of five pups and adopted the two newborns to raise as her own. Missouri’s Endangered Wolf Center calls cross-fostering “a unique and innovative tool” to increase genetic diversity and help grow this sadly dwindled population.

  New Mexico immediately announced its plan to sue USFWS to stop the federal plan to release a single family of captive-born wolves and halt any more cross-fostering of wolf puppies in the wild. The Department of Fish and Game asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order requiring that the feds get state permission for any more wolf releases. In June of 2016 a federal judge granted the injunction. However, the state’s request to remove the cross-fostered wolf pups was denied. Many scientists and wolf advocates fear that New Mexico’s resistance to continued wolf recovery is a delaying legal tactic that will simply run out the clock on this highly endangered species that has already declined by 12 percent. Scientists point out that in the eighteen years since reintroduction in the Southwest the federal government has shot fourteen wolves and captured dozens more, twenty-one of which were accidentally killed in capture or counting.

  Tensions between New Mexico’s state wildlife authorities and the federal government increased. In May 2016 a male wolf, M1396, in the Gila National Forest was captured in a steel leg trap and moved to a captive pen for the rest of his life. This wild wolf had been widely celebrated by Albuquerque schoolchildren. A sixth-grader had named him “Guardian” because “wolves need a guardian to keep them safe and help their population rise.” Guardian was native to the Fox Mountain pack, one of nineteen wolf families whose territory ranges from southwestern New Mexico to southeastern Arizona. Guardian mated with a Luna pack female, and together they were raising pups. But after reports of livestock loss, the feds decided to remove Guardian from his family and pups.

  This decision was greeted with dismay. A mate is very dependent upon male help in feeding and nurturing pups in their infa
ncy. Removing the male not only risks losing the female and her new pups; it may actually increase the risk of livestock predation because without a male, the female can rarely hunt elk or deer, their usual food source. “It’s devastating to the pack to lose an alpha,” says Regina Mossotti, director of animal care and conservation at the Endangered Wolf Center in Missouri. “It’s like it would be to your family. Imagine if you lost your mom or dad at a young age.”

  The struggle between state and federal wildlife agencies over the Mexican wolf recovery continues. The Center for Biological Diversity urges that New Mexico should “extricate itself from the state politics driven by the livestock industry, stop removing wolves from the wild, release five more family packs into the Gila as scientists recommend, and write a recovery plan that will ensure the Mexican gray wolf contributes to the natural balance in the Southwest and Mexico, forever.” Even though the law demands that the USFWS fulfill the Endangered Species Act and wolf recovery has huge public support in the Southwest, the states still continue to resist. In late fall of 2016 an Arizona judge issued a court order requiring USFW to finally update a decades-old recovery plan for the endangered Mexican gray wolf by November 2017. With only about one hundred wild wolves in Arizona and New Mexico, this move toward increasing wolf populations in the Southwest is essential to recovering the Mexican gray wolf in the United States. “Without court enforcement, the plan would have kept being right around the corner until the Mexican gray wolf went extinct,” said the Center for Biological Diversity. This court order dismissed protests from ranchers and other antiwolf factions in favor of moving ahead with wolf reintroduction.

  But the root cause of much antiwolf bias remains. Wildlife commissions reflect the preferences of their members. A recent Humane Society study of eighteen states’ game commissions revealed that 73 percent were “dominated by avid hunters, clearly unrepresentative of the state’s public they speak for, but in line with their funding sources.” New Mexico’s Department of Game and Fish receives $20 million each year from licenses bought by hunters, trappers, and anglers. Not much has changed since 1986 when Ted Williams wrote his famous essay, long before wolf reintroduction: “Wolves do not purchase hunting licenses.… That, in brief, is what is wrong with wildlife management in America.” But we are on the cusp of a cultural change in wolf recovery. As Sharman Apt Russell writes in The Physics of Beauty, “All Americans would feel better if we could agree to share our public land with one hundred Mexican wolves, a fraction of the wildness that once was here.”