Mexican wolf Asha denied freedom for failure to breed

Mexican wolf Asha roams into Sandoval Co.

A female Mexican wolf named Asha has been tracked to the Sandoval County. The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish announced Thursday the collared wolf has been positively identified and tracked near Jemez Springs. According to a release from the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, this is at least the second time Asha has […]

Mexican wolf visits New Mexico park for the first time in 91 years

A rare and endangered Mexican wolf visited the Valles Caldera National Preserve in Jemez Springs for the first time in 91 years, according to park officials. The female wolf named Asha, formally identified as F2754, reportedly traveled north from the “Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area” and reached the nature preserve on Nov. 11. Asha wandered […]

US wildlife managers have no immediate plans to capture wandering Mexican gray wolf

It’s been a long journey for one lone Mexican gray wolf — from the forests of southeastern Arizona, across the dusty high desert of central New Mexico to the edge of what is known as the Yellowstone of the Southwest. Her paws have seen hundreds of miles now over the last five months. Having reached […]

Asha, a young female Mexican wolf who twice traveled into Sandoval County last year, will not be released back into the wild in 2024.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that Asha would stay in captivity because of her failure to breed.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Aislinn Maestas said the wolf, known to wildlife biologists as F2754, has shown signs of bonding and breeding activity with a captive-born male, though so far without producing pups. The hope is that the pair may be released with pups, depending on the outcome of a February-May 2025 breeding period, according to the Associated Press.

“Our hope is that they will now spend enough time together” to produce offspring, Maestas told the AP.

Some environmentalists say there’s more to be gained by freeing Asha and her mate to roam.

“Asha deserves to be free and wild. She has done nothing wrong — she has followed her instincts into suitable wolf habitat in northern New Mexico and is being punished for it,” said Chris Smith, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. “Asha belongs in the wild whether she breeds or not; there are some pretty telling layers to this.”

Since December 2023, the last time Asha was taken from near the Valles Caldera National Preserve in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, she has been held in a facility near Socorro. Prior to this announcement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had approved Asha’s release “on the condition of successful breeding and producing pups.”

“We need to let lobos lead, respect their sentience and learn from Asha and her family,” said Claire Musser, executive director of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project. “The Caldera pack should be free to live their own lives and make their own choices. We should embrace the opportunity to make new scientific discoveries by allowing wolves to teach us, rather than continuing to disrupt and control their lives.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to keep Asha in captivity, rather than release her along with her male partner, Arcadia, is consistent with the state wildlife agency's long-held opposition to releasing almost any captive-born wolves except for young pups removed from their parents, who have been released since 2016 but with a high disappearance rate.

“This wolf, and others like her, are showing us where the wolves want to be. The human-created maps, with imaginary lines on the ground where wolves are not allowed, ignores what science tells us — that the southern Rocky Mountains are home to the Mexican gray wolf,” said Cyndi Tuell, Western Watersheds Project’s Arizona and New Mexico director. “Making Asha’s freedom dependent on her ability to breed represents an outdated and unscientific philosophy held by wildlife managers that needs to change.”