Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan Revision Completed

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has completed a revision to the Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan. The goal of the plan is to provide guidance to recover the subspecies and remove it from the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife and turn its management over to the appropriate states and tribes after delisting.

The original Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan, published in 1982, focused on reintroduction and recovery efforts to halt the extinction of the Mexican wolf. Since 1998, the Service has been reestablishing a wild population of Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico that numbered at least 113 in 2016. Mexico began releasing Mexican wolves in 2011 and now has a wild population of about 31.

At the time of recovery, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expects Mexican wolf populations to be stable or increasing in abundance.

In the United States, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will implement the recovery strategy for the Mexican wolf south of I-40 in Arizona and New Mexico, in the area designated as the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area. In Mexico, federal agencies are focusing on Mexican wolf recovery efforts in the Sierra Madre Occidental in Sonora, Durango, and Chihuahua.

In April 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed a Settlement Agreement with the State of Arizona and the radical Defenders of Wildlife and other organizations to complete a final revised Mexican wolf recovery plan by the end of November 2017.

To review the revised recovery plan and more information on the Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Program, visit http://www.fws.gov/southwest/es/mexicanwolf/ or www.azgfd.gov/wolf

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