A Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) of undetermined sex was captured on camera roaming the back country of the Sierra Madre Occidental in northern Mexico, very precariously. The snapshot was recorded earlier this year on a trap camera in the Campo Verde region of the Chihuahua-Sonora borderlands but not publicized until this month.

According to Mexico’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp), which administers the Campo Verde Natural Protected Area, the photo was considered significant in that the lobo in question did not possess a GPS collar and was likely the offspring of wolves released in the region under the auspices of the binational Mexico-U.S. Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program.

Conanp reported that the first person who beheld the wolf’s image was a Campo Verde committee member who told the protected area’s chief of a “strange coyote” photographed by a trap camera while drinking water. Taking a peek, the chief immediately realized that the animal wasn’t a coyote, but its bigger cousin.

Conanp asserted that the thirsty wolf photo showed “a great advance in in the conservation of wolves since it is now possible to speak of the first wild populations in the country after more than five decades.”

In 2021, the Mexican federal government agency calculated that at least 14 wolf litters had been born into the country’s northern wild lands since the beginning of the reintroduction program a decade earlier.

Covering about 280,000 acres, the Campo Verde Natural Protected Area offers suitable habitat for the recovery of the Mexican gray wolf. Mid-range mountainous elevations encompass pine and oak forests, hosting vital wolf prey like the white-tailed deer.

Before U.S.-led extermination campaigns almost drove an apex predator to extinction, the Mexican gray wolf inhabited broad regions of........

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