Wolf pups on their own after NM pack separates

Two six-month-old Mexican gray wolf pups are navigating southwestern New Mexico's Gila forest on their own now that their troubled pack has splintered, worrying environmentalists who think the animals' chances of survival are slim. This week's efforts to track the Fox Mountain pack show the pups are miles apart and far from the pack's alpha male. Environmentalists blame federal wildlife managers, who ordered the pack's alpha female — the pups' mother — captured and removed from the wild in response to a string of cattle kills. The fate of the pack is fueling the latest wave of frustration over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's handling of the 14-year effort to reintroduce wolves to the American Southwest. The frustration has taken the form of online petitions, public records requests and now a lawsuit. WildEarth Guardians, a Santa Fe-based environmental group, announced Wednesday that it was asking a federal court to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to release documents related to management of the moreFox Mountain pack. Another public records request filed by the Center for Biological Diversity has gone unanswered. A third has netted hundreds of pages of blacked-out documents, raising questions about decision-making within the wolf program...more