Category Archives: New Mexico

Mexican Wolf Recovery Update – 2026

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New Conservation Facility
In December, the Albuquerque BioPark completed construction of a new wolf conservation facility, which will be home to a dozen or so Mexican wolves. To help keep the wolves from becoming habituated to people, it will not be open to the public.

Lynn Tupa, the BioPark Associate Director, gave me a tour just days before the first wolves arrived. It was a sunny winter morning, and a roadrunner darted through the brush outside the enclosure while inside a worker operating a small front loader pushed dirt around, putting the finishing touches on one of the five new habitats.

Photo: Albuquerque BioPark
July 2024 by pkn

Created from a former park, the four-and-a-half-acre site is fenced, with the landscape left natural — brush, willows, and a few cottonwoods. It’s quiet, away from the hubbub of a nearby neighborhood and the public areas of the BioPark. Cameras mounted throughout the facility will enable staff to monitor wolves while minimizing human contact.

Sick or injured wolves will be treated and rehabilitated in small enclosures at the front of the facility. Larger habitats at the rear with shade structures, concrete-lined ponds, and culverts for potential denning areas, provide more space in a natural setting for pairs or families of wolves.

Wolves Arrive at Albuquerque BioPark
Three days after my visit, nine wolves were moved into the new habitat from facilities in New Mexico (including the BioPark) and Missouri that participate in the Saving Animals from Extinction (SAFE) program. They work closely with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and other agencies to recover the Mexican wolf population and to reintroduce wolves into a portion of their historical habitat in New Mexico and Arizona.

All of the Mexican wolves alive today are descended from seven wolves captured in the 1970s with the goal of saving the species from extinction. At the end of 2024, there were 286 wolves living in the wild, most of them wild-born and raised. With such a small founding population, genetic diversity, in both captive and wild populations, continues to be a challenge. But it is more easily managed with wolves living in captivity.

Each summer SAFE holds a meeting with representatives from approximately sixty facilities across the U.S. and Mexico to determine which captive wolves will be paired in the coming year. The BioPark was selected to host a breeding pair this year.

Wolf Pup Season is Coming
Wolves typically breed in February or March, so our local pair will have had a few weeks to grow accustomed to their new home and to each other. Whether or not they mate will be up to them.

Wolf pups are born about two months after breeding, so come late April, BioPark staff will be watching for signs that the female wolf is preparing to give birth. They will also be in close contact with FWS to coordinate a possible foster of BioPark pups into a family of wolves in the wild with a new litter of their own.

Placing captive-born wolf pups in wild dens is the most commonly used method to attempt to boost genetic diversity in the wild population.

H.R. 4255 – Enhancing Safety for Animals Act of 2025
Last summer Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona introduced H.R. 4255. It would remove the Mexican wolf from the endangered and threatened species lists.

The Center for Biological Diversity responded to the proposed bill with a press release stating that if passed, H.R. 4255 would “effectively end recovery efforts for this unique, highly imperiled subspecies”.

On January 22, 2026, the bill passed the Natural Resources Committee and was recommended for consideration by the full House of Representatives.

While waiting for news of the arrival of wolf pups, I plan to write letters to my Congresswoman and Senators to let them know I support continued federal protection of Mexican wolves. I will also ask that they vote against H.R. 4255 or any other bills that would delist Mexican wolves.

If you are interested in calling or writing to your Representative or Senator, this link provides information.

Now is not the time to delist Mexican gray wolves!

Here’s to Endangered Species Day!

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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.

Honoring Veterans

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A little early since we have yet to celebrate Halloween but here’s the PDF version of an op-ed I wrote for Veterans Day that was published in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

My View: To honor veterans, listen to their stories

Holes in Our Hearts – Santa Fe Reading

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Tella, Paul, Joyce. Manhattan, Kansas. May 1956.

Not the best photo but, I think, the perfect picture to go with the story I wrote about my dad’s service in the Army. On the day pictured above Dad received his commission in the morning and a few hours later graduated from Kansas State University.

My story is included in a military anthology called Holes in Our Hearts. The book is filled with the poems, short stories, and memoirs of 55 New Mexicans. The writers include service members, veterans, family members, caregivers.

Telling our stories is important but can be difficult and I am impressed when I think about the time and effort and care that went into each one of these pieces.

On Saturday ten of the writers will be in Santa Fe for a reading. The works by this group of writers range from a poem about the Holes in Our Hearts sculpture featured on the cover of the book to a child’s memory of an experience at a roadside Buddhist shrine in South Korea to a firsthand account of a deadly rocket attack in Vietnam.

If you happen to be in the Santa Fe area on Saturday, please join us.

Details:
Santa Fe Main Library
145 Washington Avenue
Santa Fe, NM
505-955-6781
August 12th, 2023
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Holes in Our Hearts – A Military Anthology

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In a departure from my usual stories/essays about wolves, bears, and feral cats I recently wrote a short family history piece about my dad’s time in the U.S. Army. It is included in the anthology of stories, poems, and memoirs in the above-pictured book.

It is an honor to be included with these 54 writers, all New Mexicans and all with a connection to the military. Many are veterans and others are family members or caregivers of veterans.

The book will soon be in all New Mexico libraries. Santa Fe Public Library has two copies available for check out now. It can also be purchased in some local New Mexico bookstores or online at Amazon.com.

On Saturday August 12th the Santa Fe Public Library will host a reading of ten of the writers. Details provided above. Six veterans and four family members will read from their work.

My Backyard – Late Spring 2023

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Piñon Sprout Photo by Paula Nixon

This tiny piñon tree is about 10 inches tall with new shoots that are 3 inches long! It sits downhill from a couple of mature piñons, one of which was our first Christmas tree after we moved into our house in 2000.

We had a good winter this year with lots of snow in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Most of our piñon and juniper trees look healthy and have new growth. But the outlook is still dire. Drought and rising temperatures are making these trees vulnerable along with another threat that Sara Van Note wrote about in this article Unraveling the Plight of the Pinyon Jay. According to Van Note, “Pinyon jays and piñon pines are wholly interdependent–the piñon nuts provide essential sustenance for the bird, and the jay offers critical seed dispersal for the tree.”

In the 28 years I have lived here I have rarely seen a pinyon jay. Much more common is the squawky Woodhouse’s scrub jay. He loudly announces his arrival at the birdfeeder and takes over the backyard. My guess is that it was one of these jays who cached a piñon nut and forgot to come back for it.

Here’s hoping it will be a good year for piñon nuts and my local scrub-jays. I don’t see as many of them as I used to but maybe a bumper crop of nuts will bring them around.

For now, I’ll be watching this sprout and giving it a little extra water over the summer months.

Kiska and Koluk

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It’s been a long time since I posted anything here. Not really sure if I’ll make it a regular thing, but I always meant to share this video that I captured back in January 2019 at the Albuquerque BioPark.

I always stop by to see the polar bears after visiting the Mexican wolf habitat and on most days the bears are lounging on the rocks, not doing much. But on this mild January day they were interacting with each other and their green barrel. The video lasts about a minute and a half. Watch to the end to see some sibling behavior that most of us can probably relate to.

Here’s a link to a little more information about polar bears and these two brothers, Kiska and Koluk.

Shared album – Paula Nixon – Google Photos

The Visitor

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Need a break from nonstop politics? Here’s a story I wrote about a snake. It was included in an anthology published by SouthWest Writers, Seeing the World in 20/20. No photo with this post because mine didn’t turn out well and all those pictures of coiled snakes on the internet spook me!

The_VisitorDownload

One-Legged Pigeon

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It needed no pity,
but just a crumb,
something to hop toward.
—Gary Whitehead

Yesterday morning I spotted a rabbit outside my kitchen window. It was dragging its right rear leg, bent at an odd angle–maybe grazed by a car or nipped by a coyote. One more worry.

It reminded me of this poem about a bird missing a leg. Turns out I’m not the only one who frets about a scrub jay with a deformed beak or a mule deer with a big hole in its ear.

I know that rabbit is just fine without my help, but after breakfast I took a wrinkled Newtown pippin from the fridge, left over from last year’s farmers market, and placed it where I had seen the rabbit, in view of my makeshift desk, the kitchen table, and now I’m waiting.

The Short Life of Wolf 1676

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It took longer than usual, at least in part because of the government shutdown in December and January, but the population number for 2018 was finally released in early April . The news was good–at least 131 Mexican wolves are living in the wild in the U.S. That’s 17 more wolves than a year ago.

Photo by Paula Nixon 1/23/18

But, wolf deaths were also up–21 in 2018 versus 12 in 2017. One wolf that did not survive the year was M1676, pictured above. My story about M1676’s journey was published here by Earth Island.