Desert Horses

Welcome to my horse blog, Desert Horses. We live in the desert southwest, near Palm Springs, CA, but board our horses up in our local mountains where it is cooler in the summer. I have 4 horses, all rescues. Here is the ranch up the mountains where the horses stay.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Mexican wolves






So, yesterday I was standing by the Mexican wolf enclosure (which was empty at the time) at the Living Desert when I heard the trainer/keeper say she'd be right over.  I meandered through the bird enclosure to take a couple of photos and then joined the group of 3 other women.  Did you know that out of the wolf sub-species the Mexican wolf is the most endangered?  That's because its home range was the southwestern United States and Mexico.  Not too many places to hide in the open desert, it seems.  The Living Desert did have a captive breeding program and did release a few of its Mexican wolves in Arizona.  One was shot immediately and they quickly scooped up the last two and brought them back to the reserve.  I don't know what happened to those wolves, but these in the enclosure are both males.  Actually, they look pretty good.  The other ones were very thin.  Apparently these two guys have never actually made a live kill.  They don't have any role models to teach them how to kill.  The keeper was explaining that the reserve's wolves, once they leave the reserve, go to an intermediate location where they are actually taught how to eat live meat.  First, they are given dead (road kill) meat.  Then, a live animal is actually brought in.  The process takes a while, but wolves are incredibly intelligent animals.  Hubby and I actually stumbled upon one of the release locations in Arizona back in 2000, when the reserve WAS releasing some of its wolves.  From what I understood, as I was eavsdropping listening to the conversation, they now do this intermediate step BEFORE they release the wolves.  I honestly don't know if these two will be released, but next time I go there, I'll try to find out.  Aren't they beautiful creatures?  There is a wolf center about 2 hours away from us, the CaliforniaWolf Center, in Julian, and I would LOVE to stop there sometime.  Here's a link to their website:  http://www.californiawolfcenter.org/  The keeper also mentioned that these two wolves are totally not aggressive.  In fact, when she enters their enclosure, they both run to the furthest spot away from her!

1 comment:

sandy said...

I will have to check out that Wolf Center in Julian. When we were at the Living Desert last month no wolves were in sight, I guess they were sleeping.