The wolves don’t recognize our borders.
“Taylor,” a Mexican gray wolf with the unique identification number 3065 crossed New Mexico’s Interstate 40 in July and early November, coming closer to Colorado than most other wolves in the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area. Taylor is the fifth wolf to move north of the interstate since at least 2017.
Then, in early December Colorado gray wolf 2403, a male from the Copper Creek Pack crossed the state line into New Mexico. 2403 was captured by New Mexico Game and Fish and returned to Colorado Parks and Wildlife that then relocated the wolf to Grand County.
Tristanna Carrell, Information and Education Division Chief for NMDGF told Alamosa Citizen, ”Gray Wolf 2403 was in New Mexico for approximately 3 days. The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish captured it approximately 40 miles south of the Colorado Border, between Tres Piedras and Tierra Amarilla.”
State wildlife agencies in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah have a Memorandum of Understanding with each other: wolves that cross state lines can be relocated back to the state they came from.
This MOU does not exist with Wyoming, where wolves are treated as predators except in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Three wolves that wandered into Wyoming have been killed.
However, while government agencies have an agreement, the restriction of wolf movement has caused ire in the conservation community who say that restricting wolves to “political” boundaries prevents natural wolf movement and genetic dispersal.
In July, when Taylor was first caught traveling west of Albuquerque near Mount Taylor — hence the name — 35 conservation organizations sent a letter to USFWS Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator Brady McGee encouraging the government to let the wolf roam further north.
“Taylor should be allowed to stay near his namesake mountain or wherever else he wants to go, regardless of the noxious political deal that led the Fish and Wildlife Service to ignore scientists and ban wolves north of I-40,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity in a statement. “Wolves have always crossed these arbitrary lines. Now more than ever Mexican wolves need connections with wolves to the north to increase their diminished genetic diversity.”
The letter cites a study that argues that for wolf populations to succeed and for recovery to work, Mexican gray wolves and northern gray wolves have to encounter each other “to facilitate introgression of northern wolves’ genes.”
Jeff Davis, the former director of CPW, told the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission in November when he was making the case for the transfer of Washington wolves to Colorado, that Colorado has “challenges in getting wolves to come in from neighboring states due to some of their management practices and state laws.”
The Mexican gray wolf became endangered in part due to inbreeding and limited genetic diversity. As with the Colorado gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf was nearly killed to extinction by the mid-20th century through a government backed eradication program.
Wiry and noticeably smaller than the Colorado gray wolf or Rocky Mountain gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf once occupied a range from northern New Mexico to southern Mexico. In 1976, the Mexican gray wolf was placed on the Endangered Species List, but by then less than 50 wolves remained.
In 1998, the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area was established in New Mexico and Arizona specifically introducing wolves to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico and the Apache National Forest in Arizona. The experimental population was started with seven wild-caught wolves.
The USFWS’s quarterly update showed an end-of-year count for 2024 of a minimum population of 286 Mexican gray wolves in the wild, with 124 in Arizona and 162 in New Mexico. This is the ninth consecutive year of growth and from 2023 to 2024 there was an 11 percent growth in population size. There are 60 established packs across Arizona and New Mexico.
Because of this consistent growth and increasing population size, Arizona Congressional Rep. Paul Gosar introduced a bill in Congress to remove the Mexican gray wolf from the Endangered Species List. This bill was co-sponsored by Colorado Reps. Lauren Boebert, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd.
“Rep. Gosar is recklessly out of touch with the science that supports carnivore recovery, and is simply pandering to the anti-wolf livestock industry’s desire to dominate public lands and control nature,” said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project in response to the legislation. “Decisions under the Endangered Species Act are supposed to be based on science, not the whims of Congress.”
“The Fish and Wildlife Service has been recovering the Mexican wolf for more than 25 years. Despite what it reports, the wolf is recovered numerically and genetically. During that time, the Fish and Wildlife Service has ignored the threat these apex predators cause our citizens and their livelihoods. Enough. The time has come to delist the Mexican wolf and to stop the insanity of tying wolf recovery in the United States, where it has been a success, to recovery of the wolf in Mexico, where all work to date has been an utter failure. Thank you, Congressman Gosar, for listening and acting on this issue,” said New Mexico Cattle Growers Association President-Elect Tom Paterson in a statement.
This isn’t the first time that Republicans in Congress and cattlemen’s associations have introduced legislation and lobbied to delist wolves.
Rep. Boebert introduced the Pet and Livestock Protection Act at the beginning of 2025. The bill aims to delist gray wolves from the protections of the Endangered Species Act. Boebert, along with other delisting voices in the federal government, says that wolves are already at a stable population and are harming the cattle and livestock industries beyond repair.
On Thursday, Dec. 18, the bill was passed in the House by a vote of 211-204 and was sent to the Senate. If approved, the bill would require delisting within 60 days of becoming law.
When the bill passed through the House Natural Resources Committee in April, Boebert said, “I’m very excited to see PALPA take another step toward being signed into law, which will be a huge victory for our ranchers, farmers and landowners in Colorado and across America. The science has been very clear on this topic for years: gray wolves are fully recovered and their comeback should be touted as a success story. Now it’s time we encourage states to set their own guidelines and allow ranchers, farmers, and landowners to protect their livelihoods. I look forward to voting for this bill on the House floor and ultimately getting it to President Trump for his signature.”
The bill has a crucial piece of language that Boebert, along with 36 other Republican Representatives, are adamant on retaining: “Reissuance of the final rule under section 2 shall not be subject to judicial review.”
This would prohibit challenges to delisting in federal court.
In a post on X, Boebert wrote, “Big win for Colorado ranchers, farmers, and rural families!…. This commonsense bill delists recovered gray wolves from the ESA, putting management back in state hands and protecting our livestock & pets from predators!”
Flanked by Rep. Hurd on the House floor, she said, “Colorado is at the center of our nation for wolf battles.”
She argued that the bill lets state and tribal governments have control over wolf management, saying wolf reintroduction efforts put “predators over people.”
Boebert decried the translocation of wolves from British Columbia, Canada, calling them “foreign predators.”
“Anti-wildlife lawmakers are once again attacking the Endangered Species Act, this time by targeting gray wolves,” said Bradley Williams, Sierra Club’s deputy legislative director for wildlife and lands protection. “The science is clear: wolves still need federal protections to recover across their historic range, and stripping them now would put this iconic species at risk. Blocking judicial review only adds to the recklessness of this bill. We have seen first-hand how vital wolves are to ecosystems like Yellowstone National Park, which suffered greatly from the absence of wolves before their reintroduction in 1995. For more than 50 years, the American people have overwhelmingly supported the Endangered Species Act and want to see it upheld, not undermined. We urge the Senate to reject this bill.”
Where will Colorado’s next group of wolves come from?
On Oct. 10, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik sent then-Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis a letter saying that Colorado, in its efforts relocating wolves from British Columbia was in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
In the letter, Nesvik said that wolves had to come from Northern Rocky Mountain states and not Canada and that any transfer of an endangered species over international borders was a federal offense. Colorado’s argument was that Canadian gray wolves, which are genetically similar to the wolves that historically occupied Colorado, are not endangered or listed as a species of concern in Canada.
Whatever happened behind the scenes after that letter was received is unknown, but on Nov. 25, 10 days after the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted 8-1 not to send its wolves to Colorado, Jeff Davis stepped down from his position at CPW.
On Nov. 15, Davis spoke at Washington’s commission meeting via Zoom. “Gray wolves elicit a lot of emotions across the public that we serve.”
He told Washington commissioners that Colorado understands the “magnitude” of its request, based on “Colorado’s urgency and not your own.”
Commissioner Lorna Smith said she was torn on helping Colorado and that she didn’t believe Washington’s wolves were “able to assist” in Colorado efforts. She cited a report showing a decline in wolves for the first time since their reintroduction to Washington.
“I just think this is not a request we can honor at this time because our own wolves are still struggling to recover,” she said.
The commissioners cited Colorado’s timeline from request to release as being too short and the difficulty of translocation.
“Translocation is so hard on wolves,” said Commissioner Melanie Rowland. “I can’t imagine being subject to that process.”
By denying Colorado more wolves, the commissioners agreed that Washington wildlife officials will have more time to work with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, who are in charge of wolf management in the region.
“We’re gambling with wolves,” said Commissioner Woodrow Myers. “There’s no guarantee when you do this kind of operation.”
Though the commission denied the request from Colorado, they left open the possibility of “furnishing” wolves to Colorado in the future, should Washington wolves no longer be endangered in the state.
This leaves Colorado’s next source of wolves, as of the middle of December, up in the air.
With an interim director at CPW taking the charge, advocates and livestock producers alike will be on the lookout for where Colorado’s next wolves come from.
