The Wolves Weren’t the Trespassers
In the borderlands of Arizona and New Mexico, it’s not predators threatening the land—it’s the politics of entitlement
Llave came across the border from Mexico in 2022, looking for a new life with her mate, Remus. She entered the U.S. across an invisible line in the unwalled landscape of New Mexico’s Animas Valley. For a time, the two Mexican wolves made a living eating pronghorn and deer on the Gray Ranch, one of the last lesser-grazed ranches on private land. Wildlife was abundant, life was good, and Llave got pregnant and began looking for a den site. Then Remus was killed, despite his brightly colored collar identifying him as a Mexican wolf, despite being about twice the size of a coyote. Llave may have given birth alone, but she couldn’t parent alone and so she abandoned the den and went walking again.
Llave crossed west into Arizona, ran north along the Chiricahua Mountains, crossed Interstate 10, and circled Mt. Graham, a place holy to the Apache people, who call the mountain Dził Nchaa Si'an and the wolves ba’cho. She ran south, spooked by something or looking for Remus, and ended up back in the same area as her failed den. She also ended up in a government trap, taken into captivity and there paired with a younger wolf named Wonder during fall of 2023.
When the two were clearly compatible and Llave was nearing the end of her pregnancy in May 2024, the pair was rereleased in the Peloncillo Mountains, a small range that straddles the Arizona/New Mexico border west of the home range that Llave and Remus shared. The stress of handling during release must have disrupted the pregnancy, and the pair never denned. They stayed together though and ran around the valley to the west of the release site throughout the summer and fall of 2024. Advocates whispered rumors about their whereabouts, but the wolves moved like ghosts, glimpsed but not observed, sensed but not seen.
The lands in this area are less abundant for wildlife, subject to overgrazing on the public domain allotments of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, patchworked with Arizona state lands and private holdings. In winter 2025, when the drought depleted the valley, Llave and Wonder took to eating private livestock, the most abundant prey source. And who could blame them? Llave was pregnant again, and dead, dying, or untended cows were strewn across the landscape.
But the wolves were blamed for the deaths, and their removal was demanded. For the ranchers, the losses reflected not just a financial burden – for which they could be compensated – but an ideological imposition, the return of a predator their forebears had exterminated to improve the tenuous economics of ranching in the desert. In a widely viewed YouTube video Arizona rancher Ed Ashurst complained about these wolves, stating, “Today it’s wolves, tomorrow it’s going to be water rights, and the next day it’s going to be any and all sorts of private property. This is tyranny. It’s blatant communism.”
The Cochise County Board of Supervisors, waving their pocket Constitutions and questionable legal theories a la the Bundys, decried the federal “overreach” that had put these wolves here, notwithstanding that the Llave herself chose her territory without government involvement. In local lore, the two collared wolves morphed into an untold number of uncollared wolves eating cattle and horses up and down the Chiricahua range, the bogeymen of loss and fear.
Emboldened by national politics leaning in their favor, the ranchers and their captive elected officials are now calling for policy changes of “Delist” and “Defund,” to kneecap the Mexican gray wolf recovery program. This would surely lead to more litigation – you can’t delist by fiat – and defunding would create boondoggles for counties with more than two wolves and ranchers who are being paid to coexist with them. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to. It captures the imaginations of people who feel entitled to an America that disappeared decades ago.
But what is Llave entitled to? A life of her choosing? To raise her young in a place with food and water? To have her mate not killed by people who should probably know better? What about her America, a continent of abundance before non-native livestock spread across the West? And what are we entitled to, those of us who understand the ecological role that Llave and Wonder and their offspring are supposed to fill, those of us who hoped for their survival?
But those of us who have worked on wolf recovery know better than to hope too hard, and indeed, Llave, Wonder, and their two puppies were pulled out of their Cochise County den and sent into captivity at the end of May. (A third puppy, described as ‘unresponsive,’ was killed in the den.) The agency has claimed the family will be re-released later this year, but where? Which pockets of public land are free from livestock grazing dominance? These spaces are few and far between, and most of the West has been handed over to the custom and culture of brimmed hats and pointy boots.
Can we reclaim this landscape for the empathetic culture of conservation and species recovery before it’s too late for Mexican wolves and the many other plants and animals at risk of extinction?
Greta Anderson is the Deputy Director of Western Watersheds Project. greta@westernwatersheds.org
Great piece, Greta
This essay appears to be a complement to the one today on grizzlies in the Montana grasslands. Here, I take an opposite view. I support the wolves and oppose the ranchers. Unlike grizzlies, the Mexican Gray wolves are a truly endangered species. Unlike grizzlies the grey wolves have never been known to attack much less eat humans. Unlike grizzlies, wolves are social animals, keep their distance from humans and do not cannibalize their own young. An altogether admirable species and one we can easily co-exist with.While the wolves are of no economic benefit to the Arizona/New Mexico regions, we take the view that a species need not be of such benefit for us to have an interest in preserving its survival.