Born to be Captive: A History of the Mexican Wolf Captive Breeding Program

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Abstract

In the 1990s, William Cronon famously declared “wilderness” a cultural construct and criticized the American tendency to view wilderness and wild nature as the opposite of civilization and completely separate from humans. But things have changed over the past quarter of a century. Today, living in the shadow of the anthropocene, the prevalent concern seems to be less humanity’s (imagined) separation from nature than the increasing capacity of humans to transform nature so thoroughly that they become indistinguishable from each other. In some instances, humans have taken over non-human nature to such a degree that its reproduction and survival require permanent human management.

Such is the case of the Mexican wolf. The US federal government eradicated Mexican wolves from the Southwest through a relentless extermination campaign in the first decades of the twentieth century. It then aided the Mexican government and ranchers to do the same south of the border, so that by the 1970s fewer than 10 wolves remained in northern Mexico. Facing extinction, both governments reversed course and gave the subspecies legal protection. Scientists in charge of the wolf conservation project made the momentous decision to capture all the individuals left in the wild to begin a captive breeding program. Over time, this program has become one of the largest, longest, most technically complex and expensive of its kind worldwide, with dozens of zoos, hundreds of experts, and several government agencies involved on both sides of the border. Today, human beings control and monitor the subspecies’ entire life cycle. As the effects of the anthropocene deepen, increased human intervention seems likely. The paradox is evident: in order to preserve wolves and “rewild” nature on the US-Mexico borderlands through their reintroduction, ever more aggressive human control will be required.

Author

• Germán Vergara, Georgia Tech