OPINION: NM must protect its iconic lobos

Nights in the Valles Calera in early winter are cold and full of stars and silence. Waking in the pre-dawn darkness, the grass glitters with frost in the moonlight, and the overwhelming sensation is one of smallness and humility, wonder and vast encompassing space. In early November of 2023, I had my first successful elk hunt in the Caldera. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

But what made the experience especially poignant was discovering that the restless wandering Mexican gray wolf Asha had been in the Caldera during that same window, following her wolfy instincts north for the second time, in search of something only a wolf heart could understand. For a brief few days, Asha and I were both predators stalking our prey through the expansive valles of a one-time volcano, slinking low through the grass, raising our noses to the wind. In that primal flow of space and time, our political, human-determined boundaries became meaningless, and the predominant driving forces were those of survival.

Since that last trip north from her arbitrarily defined Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area, which holds its northern boundary at Interstate 40, Asha has been in captivity, where U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services had been hoping she’d breed with one of two captive-bred wolves. She was picky at first, but recent reports have confirmed that Asha has whelped (given birth to) five pups, and the family will be released onto private land in the coming weeks.

Since learning this news, I’ve been thinking about what it means to share the land with apex predators like Asha. What is it about the lobo that has resonated with so many New Mexicans and people across the Southwest? Why do we use lobos as mascots and symbols of independence? And simultaneously, why are wolves so often synonymous with some outdated, villainized version of the wild?

What I learned in the Caldera during those chilly November mornings laying prone in the grass watching the blush of dawn creep over the Valle Toledo, was the depth of what we lose when we perpetuate some imagined difference between ourselves and the selves of other earthly inhabitants, both human and nonhuman alike. Asha and her wider lobo family have been here since humans first arrived, dating back to the last Ice Age, long before human boundaries like I-40 hemmed them in. What they seek is not far removed from what we do: a liberated existence that allows them to feed themselves and their families, to reproduce and seek shelter where they see fit.

In this time of increasing polarization, misunderstanding and fear, we can learn so much from the lobo, their commitment to family and play, their courageous inquisitiveness, their fierce intelligence and wisdom. If anything, we should recognize that our human politicking and power-playing will not serve the planetary future we must create. Imposing artificial boundaries on the wild world does not serve its recovery. And neither does allowing wolves to be lethally removed from their native landscapes just because they’re being wolves.

Too many of the ecosystems that sustain us have been sacrificed to industry and extractive uses, and we’re living out the consequences as most of the state is in severe drought, wildfires are burning across the west, and more species are facing extinction than ever before in human history. New Mexicans and our leaders must do everything we can to safeguard our iconic lobos and the land they need to roam. It’s time to protect our wild neighbors, and recognize that their fate is inextricably tied to our own.