Gray wolves are recovering in the American Southwest: “There are now at least 286 Mexican gray wolves roaming parts of New Mexico and Arizona — 11 percent more than the previous year, marking the ninth straight year that the population of endangered animals has grown.”
There are now “26 breeding pairs in the wild. Of the more than 160 pups born in 2024, just under half survived to the end of the year.” The wolves live in mountain ranges in New Mexico and Arizona.
“The smallest subspecies of gray wolf in North America, Mexican wolves were listed as endangered in 1976, and a binational captive breeding program was started to guard against extinction. The reintroduction program has been the source of many legal battles over the years — with environmentalists seeking to get more captive wolves released into the wild and ranchers fighting to protect their way of life. The subspecies’ recovery effort carries a $203 million price tag based on a 25-year time frame.”
Reintroducing wolves can cut back the coyote population, which in turn increases the populations of pronghorns and foxes that coyotes eat and/or kill.
Coyotes used to be much less numerous than they are today, when they are found across the country. Coyotes are now present in every state except Hawaii. They were once limited to prairies and grasslands of the Great Plains, but now coyotes occupy a wide variety of landscapes across the country. That includes forests, deserts, and mountains, not just grasslands.
Bison have made a comeback in Europe. “In the 1920s, there were just 54 European bison, all in captive areas, after intense hunting over millennia, but thanks to rewilding efforts there are now around 10,000″ bison in Europe, “mostly in Russia and Belarus.”
The snow leopard population has doubled in Kazakhstan. Mountain gorillas are making a comeback in the African country of Rwanda.
Wild horses recently returned to Kazakhstan after being absent for two hundred years.
