Maya Higa says Alveus is now officially part of the Mexican Wolf SAFE program. That puts her Texas wildlife sanctuary inside an organized effort to save one of North America’s rarest wolves.
SAFE stands for Saving Animals From Extinction. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) started the initiative in 2015. Each SAFE program brings zoos, conservation groups, and field partners together to work on one threatened species.
Partners in SAFE programs help in different ways. Some house animals or support breeding plans. Others focus on research, education, or raising money for work in the wild.
Alveus hasn’t confirmed which of these roles it’ll take on. It’s also not confirmed whether wolves are headed to the sanctuary, when they would arrive, or where they would live. Fans are already hoping for wolves early next year, but there’s no official timeline.
One more thing to clear up: Joining a SAFE program isn’t the same as AZA accreditation. These are separate things.
Meet the lobo
The Mexican wolf, Canis lupus baileyi, is the smallest and rarest subspecies of gray wolf in North America. It once lived across the southwestern US and northern Mexico.
Hunting, trapping, and poisoning almost wiped it out. By the late 1970s, the last few wild wolves had been captured for a breeding program. Today’s population comes from just seven of those founders. That makes genetic diversity a big problem.
The US released Mexican wolves back into the wild in Arizona and New Mexico in 1998. Mexico started its own releases in 2011. The wolves are protected under the US Endangered Species Act.
Recovery is slow but moving. The US Fish and Wildlife Service counted at least 286 wild Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico at the end of 2024. That was the ninth year in a row that the number went up.
Experts use several tools to keep the population healthy. These include planned breeding, genetic tracking, releases, and “cross-fostering.” In cross-fostering, pups born in human care are placed into wild dens to be raised by wild parents. Illegal killings, conflict with ranchers, and the small gene pool are still major threats.
