I sincerely hope more Mexican zoos will invest in exhibits for their local subspecies of wolf. It would be a significant push in the public domain to get Mexican wolves again well established in the wild.
I do think - and there is good evidence to suggest this - that a species like the local pronghorn would actually benefit from wolves on the land! What is the situation in northern Mexico with coyotes and other smaller predators? Any species interactions with other ungulates locally?
Good Post estimado Kifaru,
The binational recovery plan for the mexican wolf decides what mexican zoos recieve lobos. Only the best zoos in mexico, such as Mexico City, Guadalajara, Africam puebla, recieve the lobos. The mexico city zoos have a very good record for breeding mexican wolves.
Attempts to reestablish lobos in the wild in mexico have failed until now because all the released canid were killed by ranchers. Much More work needs to be done to convince the local population.
The coyote question is very interesting. With the decline of lobos and jaguars, coyotes became the dominant predator in rural mexico, even becoming overabundant in some areas. The coyote population needs to be controlled by the larger predators which are now gone or scarce.
Yellowstone had a similar situation with overabundant coyotes, wapiti deer and bison. With the introduction of wolves back on this parched landscape the forests recovered, the most dominant herbivores became more flighty and declined somewhat in numbers and allowed other species almost gone like pronghorn to recover in significant fashion.
With Californian and Sonoran pronghorn at such critical lows in the southern US and north-central Mexico wolves would be part of the answer for getting pronghorn recovery really onto the road, methinks.
Yellowstone had a similar situation with overabundant coyotes, wapiti deer and bison. With the introduction of wolves back on this parched landscape the forests recovered, the most dominant herbivores became more flighty and declined somewhat in numbers and allowed other species almost gone like pronghorn to recover in significant fashion.[/quote]
