Alberto Aldama, Direccion General de Vida Silvestre, Instituto Nacional de Ecologia, Secretaria de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca, Avenida Revolucion 1425, Nivel 19, Tlacopac, San Angel, DF, Mexico

The Mexican Federal Government has recently officially acknowledged the group of people that has supported, guided, and designed the complex set of efforts, actions and strategies towards the recovery of Mexican Wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) in Mexico. The baseline had been done decades ago by several researchers, animal keepers, veterinarians, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, zoos, and government agencies, and other interested people.

The Mexican Wolf Recovery Subcommittee - part of the newly constituted National Technical Consultive Committee for the Recovery of Priority Species - is comprised of five working groups: Captive Management, Management in the Wild, Environmental Education, Research, Funding, and Public Relations. The Mexican Wolf Recovery Project is aimed, first towards the strategic objective of recovery; i.e. the establishment of stable healthy populations of Mexican wolves in the wild in the temperate forests of Northern Mexico, the subspecies' historical range.

This long-term objective must rely on the achievement of more immediate goals, such as the acquisition of a sufficiently large and demographically stable captive population (between 100 and 120 wolves) in Mexican territory; environmental education campaigns directed at children all over the country and intensively to rural people; agreements with landowners, formal acquiescence of cattle ranchers, and establishment of a livestock-depredation compensation fund; promotion of research on molecular genetics, artificial reproduction, veterinary care, behaviour, and applied community ecology; prospecting for suitable release sites; and the much more immediate and urgent need to strengthen the search for the last possibly surviving wild wolves.

These last two main objectives, searching for reintroduction sites and for wild wolves, should be accomplished simultaneously and by the same group of professionals for better efficiency. Closely related to this is the necessity of establishing a hierarchichal approach to evaluate habitat state, distribution, abundance and diversity of herbivore communities, the degree of isolation from human presence or activities, types of land ownership, degree of social acceptance and involvement in the Project. All this requires good coordination for the participation of a great number of people on a long-term basis, along with reliable fund sources.

Strategic guidelines have been developed considering the following aspects: ecological (habitat islands, corridors, transitional types, agricultural, cattle and forestry land and human settings), geographical (two great regions: North Sierra Madre Oriental [Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, possibly San Luis Potosi]; and North Sierra Madre Occidental [Sonora, Chihuahua, possibly Durango and Zacatecas]), academic (students and technicians are always present, teachers or tutors are responsible for organizing emergency local searches, project leaders focus all support for a definitive capture expedition); and institutional (Universidad Autonoma de Chihuahua and Centro Regional Dugango, Instituto de Ecologia, AC in the West, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Universidad Autonoma Agraria Antonio Narro in the East, all four in the Chihuahuan desert).