McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — An endangered Mexican gray wolf walked 23 miles over five days to get around a section of border wall in New Mexico as he tried to cross into Mexico, an animal rights group said.
The wolf, nicknamed “Mr. Goodbar,” had a GPS collar that periodically beamed his locations to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as he walked nearly the distance of a marathon Nov. 23 to Nov. 27. The locations were released this week to the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Mr. Goodbar’s Thanksgiving was forlorn, since he was thwarted in romancing a female and hunting together for deer and jackrabbits,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center. “But beyond one animal’s frustrations, the wall separates wolves in the Southwest from those in Mexico and exacerbates inbreeding in both populations.”
The wolf wandered from southwest of Las Cruces, New Mexico, through the desert and canyonous terrain and walked alongside the border wall for four days, according to a map supplied by the Center.
On Nov. 28, after five days, “Mr. Goodbar” headed northwest away from the border, according to his GPS locator.
He was recently located farther north in the Gila National Forest, a mountainous rangeland east of the Arizona state line, which is popular among wolves.
“Allowing Mexican gray wolves to roam freely would do right by the sublime Chihuahuan Desert and its lush sky-island mountains,” Robinson said in a news release.
“Mr. Goodbar” was born in the Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas and released in 2020 into the wild in Arizona.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at ssanchez@borderreport.com.