Report: Mexican gray wolf is a subspecies, keeps endangered status

The endangered Mexican gray wolf is still endangered — for now. The National Academy of Sciences said Thursday that a six-month study determined the Mexican gray wolf is a separate subspecies from other gray wolves, which recently lost their endangered species status. The NAS study was commissioned by Congress to look into the status of the Mexican gray wolf and the red wolf, of which there are just 24 remaining in North Carolina. The report did not consider the animals’ endangered status, only their taxonomy, and it determined that both are distinct from the generic gray wolf. For the Mexican gray wolf, the study’s authors were directed to determine if it is “physically or genetically distinct enough to justify that status” of subspecies, according to the report. Joseph Travis, a Florida State University biology professor who chaired the committee that wrote the report, said committee members “read everything in the world ever written about Mexican gray wolves” to reach their conclusion. “There’s always been this concern that when you took the last few ones you found (in the wild) and bred them … who the hell were those guys anyway?” Travis said. “Were they really Mexican wolves, were they stray dogs, what the hell were these things?” After looking at all the available data, he said the committee determined that the current population did, in fact, descend from Mexican gray wolves, and they are still their own subspecies. “There is no evidence there is any domestic dog ancestry mixed in” with the Mexican wolves, Travis said, and “no evidence that they, in any case, hybridized with coyotes.” “The Mexican gray wolf has, from its discovery, been considered a distinct wolf,” the report said. “Its size, morphology and coloration pattern distinguish it from other North American wolves.”...MORE