Mexican Wolves
Author: Anne Schultz

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Scientific Name: Canis lupus baileyi Common Name: Mexican Wolf Spanish Name: Lobo

Description:
The Mexican wolf is subspecies (a certain kind) of the North American gray wolf. They are the smallest subspecies of gray wolf: males are reported to weigh between 68 and 99 pounds, and females weigh between 54 and 93 pounds. They are 4 ˝ to 5 ˝ feet long from their nose to their tail. They stand 28 ˝ to 31 ˝ inches at the shoulder.

Wolves look a lot like coyotes, but they are much bigger. A wolf's coat is a light tan or buff color, with black, dark gray, brown, or cinnamon markings. Coat color may change as the season changes and pups in a litter may all have distinct markings.

Geographic range:
The natural range of the Mexican Gray Wolf extends throughout southern New Mexico, east-central Arizona, western Texas, and Mexico.

Habitat:
Wolves choose to live in many different kinds of habitats within the southwest. They live anywhere, from riparian areas (along waterways) to mountain woodlands (pine, oak, and pinyon-juniper) and nearby grasslands above 4500 feet in elevation.

Food Web:
Mexican wolves, like most other animals in the order Carnivora, are predators. Wolves usually hunt in groups and can chase their prey for long distances. Wild wolves in the southwest and Mexico eat white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk , pronghorn , and sometimes small animals like rabbits and beavers(Parsons 1998).

Healthy wolves have no natural predators in the wild, but humans have driven the Mexican wolf to the brink of extinction.

Reproduction and Development:
The Mexican wolf breeds once every year, and pups are born in April or May, in a den dug by the mother.

Behavior:
The Mexican wolf was extirpated (became locally extinct) in New Mexico and Arizona before scientists had a chance to study them in the wild. Information about the behavior of the Mexican wolf is only taken from captive wolves in zoos, old reports from wolf hunters and naturalists, and from studies of gray wolves other places in North America. Wolves are social animals. They generally live in family groups of 3 to 6, which usually including pups and yearlings. Wolves hunt by working together and packs protect and maintain their territories for hunting and breeding.

Conservation:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team in 1979. The group developed a recovery plan for the species, which had the following objective:

“To conserve and ensure the survival of C. l. baileyi by maintaining a captive breeding program and re-establishing a viable, self-sustaining population of at least 100 Mexican wolves in middle to high elevations of a 5,000 mi2 (13,000 km2) area within the Mexican wolf's historic range” (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1982).

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species: Canis lupus baileyi

References:
Species information was obtained from the Biota Information System of New Mexico (BISON) and the following sources:

Brown, David E. 1983. The Wolf in the Southwest: the making of an endangered species . Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Harrington, Fred H. and L. David Mech. 1978. Wolf vocalization. In: Hall, Roberta L. and Henry S. Sharp (eds), Wolf and man: evolution in parallel. New York: Academic Press, pp. 109-132.

Nowak, Ronald M. 1997. Walker's mammals of the world online, version 5.1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Parsons, David R. 1998. “Green fire” returns to the Southwest: reintroduction of the Mexican wolf. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 26:799-807

Related Terms: canis lupus baileyi, lobo