Conservation groups decry decreasing diversity among Mexican gray wolves

An administrator for the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program pleaded in 2004 to keep a “problem wolf” alive.

The wolf and his pack had been preying on livestock. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staffer advocated in a memo to capture him alive rather than kill him due to his genetic value — describing him as the “most genetically valuable wolf in the wild.”

The wolf was ultimately killed, according to Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. More than two decades later, genetic diversity remains a pressing issue for the growing Mexican gray wolf population, which comes from just seven founder animals.

“There is no known level of inbreeding as dire as this, where the species … has not gone extinct, it hasn’t blinked out,” Robinson said.

In a letter late last week to state ga