Great news: The Obama Administration has suspended plans to remove protections for the gray wolf provided under the Endangered Species Act. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the delisting plan, part of a last-ditch effort by the Bush Administration, could have resulted in the shooting of hundreds of wolves in the Northern Rockies.
Sad news: A female Mexican gray wolf, one of the last of her kind, a critically endangered subspecies once found throughout the southwest, has been illegally shot and dumped alongside highway 260, near Pinetop, Arizona. The female was a member of the Moonshine Pack and a part of the controversial Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Although the Project aimed to have 100 Mexican wolves in the wild by the tenth anniversary in 2008, there are currently only 50. So far, twenty-eight wolves have been shot illegally.
Above, a Mexican gray wolf in captivity at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona. Photograph by Caroline Fraser
