My first visit this year to the Albuquerque BioPark was a few weeks ago on a sunny April Saturday. Lots of other folks had the same idea so I couldn’t stand and watch the resident Mexican wolves as long as I would have liked. I did get this short video before I had to give up my viewing spot to another visitor.

While taking photos a little girl next to me asked, “What’s he doing?” but she was not satisfied with my response, “Oh, just walking around.” She thought about it a minute and came up with a more satisfactory answer, “He’s looking for prey.”

Although it was a little early for pups, I was hoping to get an idea of whether or not there might be a new litter at the zoo this spring. What I saw was three adult wolves in the public display.

In an email exchange with Lynn Tupa, the BioPark manager, I learned that Archer (born at the zoo in 2019) and two females were the wolves I saw. Four sibling wolves are also at the zoo but are off-exhibit and are not visible to the public. No breeding was recommended for any of these wolves so no pups this year. To prevent unintended pregnancy, female wolves are implanted with birth control.

A few days after my visit, the ABQ BioPark issued this press release which included exciting news for the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program–a new large, off-exhibit habitat will be built, construction starting this spring. Once complete it will enable the BioPark to increase its efforts in the wolf surrogacy program. Surrogacy is a big part of the recovery effort and focuses on breeding Mexican wolves in captivity and placing pups into the dens of wild wolves to be raised along with their own pups.

The most recent survey of Mexican wolves living in the wild indicated a population of 257 wolves.