So many people have put so much time and effort into the recovery of the endangered population of Mexican gray wolves.  One of the earliest was Norma Ames the team leader of the group that wrote the Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan published in 1982.  Below is a brief piece I wrote about her. #LoboWeek

Photo Credit: Mark Dumont via Compfight cc

The wolf presented the mangled trophy to Norma–a dead ground squirrel.  That was the moment she began to believe the beleaguered Mexican gray wolf had a shot at making a comeback in the wild.

Norma Ames, trained as a biologist, was the assistant chief of the New Mexico Game and Fish Department in 1971 when she adopted two endangered wolf pups born in captivity at the Department’s Ghost Ranch facility.  She built an enclosure on her large, remote property in the forest, a place to raise and socialize the pups.

Five years after she took those first pups home (she later adopted a second pair), Mexican gray wolves, cousins to the northern gray wolf, were added to the endangered species list.  In constant conflict with ranchers in the Southwest, their population had been decimated by relentless trapping, shooting, and poisoning.   Seven wolves, called the McBride line for the trapper who captured them in the late 70s (all that he could locate), were brought in to start a breeding program.

The day Norma realized her wolves could and would still hunt she stopped the socializing, began to keep her distance.  She strove to keep them as wild as possible, hoping that someday they might be reintroduced into their native habitat.

In the early 80s Norma headed up the team that published a recovery plan for the Mexican wolf.

From the time I picked up and read the report with Norma’s name on the cover page, I wanted to know more about her, but where to go to ask questions about a woman who wrote a relatively obscure government report more than 30 years ago.  It turns out someone did find Norma and asked at least some of my questions.  Peter Steinhart recounted the story of her role in the recovery of Mexican wolves in his 1995 book The Company of Wolves.

Norma’s wolves weren’t destined for the wild.  Their lineage, Ghost Ranch, was considered tainted, not pure wolf.  She stopped breeding them and, one by one, they died of old age.  In 1987 after she had retired and was preparing to sell her place and move she had to make the tough decision to euthanize the lone survivor.  She did it to save the wolf from living out its life in a cage at a zoo.

But in 1997, the year before the first McBride wolves were released in the mountains of Arizona, genetic testing confirmed that the Ghost Ranch lineage, which had been maintained in New Mexico, was pure and the two lines, plus another from Mexico, were crossbred, giving the population a much-needed genetic boost and a better chance at recovery.

Wolves mate once a year in the winter, typically in February.  Norma died in February of 2005, seven years into the reintroduction effort.  Recovery was inching forward, with long term survival of Mexican wolves still not assured.  But by then there were eleven families of wolves running free in Arizona and New Mexico and several of the breeding wolves had been born in the wild.

More than twenty wolf pups were born in the spring of 2005 with at least ten still surviving at the end of the year.   Some of them carried Ghost Ranch genes.

Photo Credit: Mark Dumont via Compfight cc

Many of us in New Mexico, Arizona, and points beyond were waiting last week to hear what a U.S. District Judge in Las Cruces was going to say about wolf introductions (releases) in New Mexico.

For a a quick recap of how we got to this point, this article about a 100 year old Mexican wolf pelt that was returned to New Mexico last year tells a bit about the history of the lobo (and its demise) in the Southwest and also about recent changes to the recovery effort that now calls for  introduction of the endangered wolves in New Mexico.  Up until now initial releases only occurred in Arizona with wolves being allowed to migrate across the state line into the Gila National Forest (Gila).

Objecting to the new rules, the NM Department of Game and Fish refused to issue permits to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) granting them permission to release wolves in the state.  The conflict escalated once it became known that in April FWS had placed  two captive-born pups with a pack living in the Gila without a permit. That’s when the state went to court to request a restraining order to not only halt future wolf releases, but to also remove the pups.

A few days before the judge issued a ruling, four conservation groups—Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance—filed a motion on behalf of the wolves.  In this Albuquerque Journal guest column, Michael Robinson with the Center for Biological Diversity makes the compelling argument that Mexican wolves need to be rescued from politics if they are to have a real chance at recovery.

Over the last few weeks, in newspapers around the state there have been numerous letters to the editor written in support of wolf releases in New Mexico.   Curious, I did a little more looking to see if there had been letters expressing other viewpoints.  I did not find any, although there is opposition.

On Friday, June 10th, the judge issued a 24-page opinion granting the state’s request to prohibit the release of wolves in the state without a permit. The ruling inhibits FWS’s ability to get more wolves out into the wild in an ongoing effort to improve genetic diversity.

The good news?  The wolf pups, recently placed with a wild foster pack in the GIla, will be allowed to stay.

The wolves, of course, are oblivious to the drama.   About now, the pups of the year are beginning to explore their surroundings. Over the summer they will start to travel with the pack, short trips at first until they are bigger and stronger.  And on a dark quiet night they will discover their voices, following the lead of the adults, joining in the chorus, lifting their heads in a first howl.

My birdbath, a large shallow dish, hangs suspended from three chains on a skinny post in the backyard.  During the summer months it’s the only thing on my bird-feeding station, no sunflower seeds or suet that might encourage the bears to come sniffing around.  This adobe-colored, plastic version replaced a much more beautiful, but less practical, blue-glazed pottery saucer that met its demise a few years ago.

The robins don’t seem to care—plastic or ceramic—they just need a place to get a drink and take a bath.

Photo Credit: joeldinda via Compfight cc

Last year a pair of the thrushes nested in a nearby piñon tree and took turns coming to the water.  The male with his bright red breast and dark head was an enthusiastic bather.  It was my favorite part of the day—to watch him  take a sip or two while standing on the rim before venturing in to take a short but splashy bath.  When he was done, he’d pause to have a good shake and then would disappear in the trees.

There’s been no sign of the two in the nest this spring.  My backyard has been filled with welders and stonemasons and their noisy tools.  An occasional robin—maybe the same one?—passes through and pauses for a quick drink, but no bathing.

I’m not the only one.  In this lovely essay, Constancy, the writer has also been missing a  familiar pair of birds.

My backyard has gone quiet now.  The work is finished.  Maybe the robins will return.

Valle de Oro
Photo by: Paula Nixon

The first week in May I made a trip to Albuquerque and stopped to spend an hour at Valle de Oro, the wildlife refuge just a few minutes south of the city.

It was a perfect spring day,  cottonwood trees with shiny, new leaves, puffy white clouds hanging above the distant mountains.  The hay fields were flooded and birds were everywhere:  perched on fenceposts, singing; floating in a puddle; soaring overhead.

I walked along a dirt road and flushed a cattle egret out of a ditch running with irrigation water.  Through the barbed wire I could see Canada geese and mallards.  A flock of dark birds, foraging with long, curved beaks were new to me.  Back at the car I flipped through my field guide until I identified them—white-faced ibis.

The next day on the refuge’s Facebook page a birder posted her list of birds observed on a three-hour hike through the area.  She had spotted fifty-three different species. Wow.  I was excited to see ten or so different birds and to identify one new one—the difference between an expert and a novice.

I perused her list of warblers, swallows, and finches.  Some I knew, many I didn’t and those I looked up in my Sibley guide until I found the one that I had taken a blurry photo of, but didn’t recognize.   It was a killdeer, a member of the plover family—another new addition to my list, a coastal bird at an elevation of over 5000 feet and more than 800 miles away from the Pacific.  With its white-banded throat, big eyes, and long legs allaboutbirds.org calls it “a shorebird you can see without going to the beach.”

It’s been a rocky start to the year for Mexican gray wolves.  First, it was the decrease in the wild population as documented in the year-end count.  Then, several wolf deaths in the new year, some if not all caused by humans.  And finally, the New Mexico Game and Fish Commission continues to thwart recovery efforts in our state, attempting to restrict or prohibit the release of captive wolves into the wild.

Wolf Rally–Albuquerque, NM. April 28, 2016.
Photo by: Jean Ossorio

None of those things have changed and it will continue to be an ongoing battle to establish a genetically-diverse population of Mexican wolves, safe from extinction, living in their native habitat.  But there was some good news in the final week of April.

Here are a few of the stories:

April 23, 2016 An editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican spoke out strongly in favor of the wolf recovery program and in support of the planned introduction of a new pack and cross-fostering of pups in New Mexico

April 28, 2016  A “more wolves, less politics” rally was held outside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife (FWS) building in Albuquerque urging the agency to move forward with plans to release wolves in the Gila National Forest.  The event also commemorated the day 40 years ago when the wolf was added to the endangered species list.

April 29, 2016 And most positive of all: the news that earlier in the week two captive Mexican wolf pups born just days before at the Endangered Wolf Center in Missouri had been transported to New Mexico and placed in a den with a wild pack that had new pups of their own. Known as cross-fostering, it’s one way to get some much-needed genetic diversity into the wild population.  FWS confirmed that the cross-fostering was successful with the alpha female accepting the new pups.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this rare video of a howling wolf shared by FWS.  Identified as 1455 of the Prieto Pack in New Mexico, this male yearling was given the name Tsuki (the Japanese word for moon) in the recent naming contest.

“. . . her name drops into my head. Mabel. From amabilis, meaning loveable, or dear.   An old, slightly silly name, an unfashionable name.   There is something of the grandmother about it: antimacassars and afternoon teas. There’s a superstition among falconers that a hawk’s ability is inversely proportional to the ferocity of its name. Call a hawk Tiddles and it will be a formidable hunter; call it Spitfire or Slayer and it will probably refuse to fly at all.” —Helen Macdonald

Mabel is at the center of Macdonald’s captivating memoir about the upheaval of her life when she suddenly and unexpectedly lost her father.

In the weeks after his death Macdonald purchased Mabel, a northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), and began training her to hunt.  Even though she had years of experience raising birds of prey, it was still a big decision.  According to The Sibley Field Guide to Birds, the goshawk is the largest of the accipiters—fully grown, 21 inches tall with a wingspan of 41 inches.  The bird is also notoriously fierce and difficult to train.

Wondering what it would be like to have a Mabel in my house, I got out a tape measure.  Standing on my kitchen counter, she could look me in the eye and demand a piece of raw steak and, no doubt, she would receive it.

Tim Gallagher, editor of Living Bird and also an experienced falconer, wrote this review which illuminates the challenges Macdonald faced.  But even for those of us who will never don a falcon’s glove, Helen and Mabel’s journey is compelling.  Their story stayed with me long after I read the final page.

The paperback edition of H Is for Hawk was released in March and for the last couple of weeks Macdonald was on a book tour of the western U.S.—Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Denver.  I was looking forward to her Santa Fe visit.  She stepped on the little wooden stage at Collected Works last Saturday evening and charmed the standing-room only crowd with tales of her life with Mabel.

My favorite was her description of walking around Cambridge with Mabel on her gloved fist, overhearing mothers warn their children not to get too close to the “hawk lady.”