Free Asha. Or cage her? This question is at the heart of a bitter debate.

National Geographic

2 days ago

A photograph of Asha from February 2023 shows her in a 'capture box' at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. This was the second time the endangered Mexican wolf, tagged F2754, was captured by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Asha has been held in captivity ever since. Photograph By Aislinn Maestas, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP
Asha is circling the perimeter of her pen. She's pacing, moving with that long, rangy gait that all Mexican gray wolves have, her body graceful and liquid, motions smooth and purposeful. She stalks around jagged rocks, behind juniper bushes and yucca plants. She runs from the humans in her pen, anxious and hyperaware. For my part, I'm awestruck. This is the closest I've been to a wolf, and I'm only able to see her because she is currently being held in captivity by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Sevilleta Wolf Management Facility near Socorro, New Mexico.
Asha has been ensnared; and like so many humans invested in her, so have I. As part of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan, each year federal, state, and tribal agencies across New Mexico and Arizona track and record the progress of the endangered species' population growth. Photograph By Chancey Bush, The Albuquerque Journal via AP
The four-year-old she-wolf has been placed in the facility because she refuses to stay put, repeatedly crossing into territory off-limits to her. Born in the wild, likely a member of an Arizona pack, Asha has a history of traveling solo into the mountains of northern New Mexico, entering land that's forbidden to her kind by federal conservation policy. At least twice, she's roamed outside the perimeter of the recovery zone and into the forestlands north of Santa Fe. Asha, like all Mexican gray wolves, is supposed to stay within a specific region, one that stretches more than 153,000 square miles across southern Arizona and New Mexico and is bordered on the north by Interstate 40.
The first time she crossed the line, in January 2023, Asha was captured near Angel Fire, New Mexico, and returned to the designated zone. When it happened for a second time in under a year, FWS officials determined that she was putting herself in danger and that she could no longer be trusted to roam on her own. FWS captured her in December 2023 from the southern Rocky Mountains and placed her in the Sevilleta facility. She has remained there ever since.
Asha's restlessness has made her a contentious flash point between conservationists and FWS officials, who have conflicting perspectives on how to best save the gray wolf. Both agree that Asha's survival—and her ability to give birth, or whelp—is necessary to the continuation of her subspecies, which was once nearly hunted to extinction. But they disagree on almost everything else. This map shows Asha's route from southeastern Arizona to northern New Mexico from June through December 2023, shortly before she was recaptured by FWS. Mexican Wolf Interagency Field Team
FWS argues that it's dangerous for Asha to wander past the I-40 line, noting that she could be injured or shot by a rancher. Many wildlife conservationists vehemently object, insisting that Asha should be free to roam. Michelle Lute, a wolf biologist and executive director of Wildlife for All, has been advocating for Asha's release since 2023. 'I think Asha is teaching us what a lot of wolves would do if they had the chance,' she says. 'They have their own agency to choose the best habitats.'
Asha has become imbued with meaning from multiple directions. On one side, there are U.S. government officials, who want Asha to mate, thus contributing to the limited gene pool of the population and growing the Mexican gray wolf population. On the other side are members of the public and wildlife advocates, who believe that Asha, like all members of the wild world, innately knows what is best for her. She is following her instincts, and we should redesign our world to support her natural behavior, they maintain.
As I look at Asha pacing her pen, one thing is clear to me: Asha has become more than a wild canine, temporarily penned for her own safety. She has been turned into humanity's struggle against nature itself, our collective hubris, our calamitous march into the Anthropocene.
Asha, of course, knows none of this. Asha stands, alert, in her enclosure near Socorro, New Mexico. Her restlessness has made her a contentious flash point between conservationists and FWS officials.
Although I think Asha is heartbreakingly beautiful, the truth is that she's an unremarkable female member of her species, with a scruffy reddish-brown coat, white belly, and black-tipped tail. She looks like a coyote, and like most of her subspecies, she isn't much bigger than my own dog. Mexican gray wolves typically weigh between 50 and 80 pounds and measure around five feet from nose to tail.
There is nothing technically special about Asha. Despite that, the restless lobo, according to local media, has 'captured the hearts' of Southwesterners, many of whom are outraged by her captivity. Asha is easily the most famous wolf in the region, possibly the most beloved. More than just an endangered wolf, she's become a symbol. In 2023, a reporter for Source New Mexico wrote that Asha is 'resilient in the face of peril,' a creature that 'breaks assumptions, something many New Mexicans can relate to.' Even her name was a gift, bestowed by an Arizona schoolchild.
From that perspective, it's easy to see Asha as a tragically imprisoned victim of the state that deserves to roam free.
But officials at FWS don't see her that way. To them, she is F2754—that's the number FWS has given her—a healthy member of an endangered species, well on her way to fulfilling her biological destiny to help repopulate that species. Created in the late 1990s, the recovery zone is derived from the projected historic habitat of the Mexican gray wolf, where FWS biologists believe the species would have thrived centuries ago, based on site feasibility studies and land surveys. (Members of the public were also allowed to weigh in on the project and its scope through opinion surveys and public meetings.) Although FWS has held steady in insisting that this is where these wolves belong, the boundaries of the zone continue to be a hot topic of debate, especially as climate change has already taken its toll on the delicate ecosystems of the region and as wolves like Asha continue to test its limits.
In December 2023, Asha was paired with two male Mexican gray wolves (brothers) that were raised in captivity. This year was her second mating season; the first one failed to produce offspring, and officials pulled one of the two males upon realizing that Asha had better bonded with the other. FWS was hoping that Asha would mate with a captive Mexican gray male to increase the species' genetic diversity. In early spring 2025, the two wolves were observed via the facility's trail camera engaging in several completed 'ties' (i.e., mating sessions), and on May 20, FWS confirmed that Asha had produced a litter of pups.
It is unclear what will happen to Asha, her pups, and her mate. It is possible that their small pack will be released into the wild, together. This is what advocates want. The idea is that Asha will teach her cubs, and thus also her mate, how to survive in the recovery zone. It is also possible that they will all remain in captivity. 'We are not going to foster any pups from her litter,' says a spokesperson for FWS. Right now, the plan is to continue 'giving her space' so she can 'provide the best' for her offspring.
There is no set release date for Asha at this time. Bringing the Mexican gray wolf back from the brink of extinction
Another truth: Asha is remarkable. She is one of fewer than 300 Mexican wolves in the United States, part of a growing but still fragile population.
History is important to Asha's story. Long before FWS and conservationists began butting heads over the fate of one wolf, they had to work together to save the Mexican gray from the brink of extinction. By the 1970s, the Mexican gray wolf had been virtually eliminated from the wild with only a handful living in captivity, the others likely killed by ranchers and sport hunters.
'We wiped out all the wolves in the United States,' says Jim Heffelfinger, a wildlife science coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department and member of the 2010 Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan.
In 1976, shortly after the Endangered Species Act was passed, Mexican wolves were officially listed as endangered, but their survival looked grim. The subspecies survived only because of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan, an international program designed to restore the animals to southern America and northern Mexico. Founded by FWS, the recovery plan was approved and put into motion in 1982. The first wild release took place in 1998 with a founding population of just seven animals that were freed inside the newly identified Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area. Some of those were sourced from zoos and wildlife centers, but the rest were captured from the wild by trapper Roy McBride.
Conservationists and FWS officials tell the history of the wolves' reintroduction quite differently. For as long as the government has been patrolling the great outdoors, it has had a hand in the death of wolves. Although the organization has gone by several different names since its inception in 1871, FWS has a long history of trapping, shooting, poisoning, and otherwise targeting wild canines. For hundreds of years, wolves were considered, at best, a livestock-stalking pest and at worst, a threat to the nation's children. In the 1800s, bounty programs began, which eventually offered $20 to $50 for every wolf carcass. These proved wildly effective.
'In 1945 they successfully killed the very last wolf in the western United States that had been born in the West,' says Michael Robinson, senior conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. 'It was a very organized program. A systemized, efficient, comprehensive killing of wolves.' FWS frames the story differently: 'The history of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the corresponding management of wolves reflects public perception,' says a spokesperson for the agency. 'In the early days of the agency, the focus was on control of wolves to mitigate conflict with livestock and other human activities, reflecting the dominant public sentiment.'
In Robinson's version of events, McBride wasn't just a skilled tracker of Mexican wolves; he was the best at killing them. 'They sent one of their most experienced wolf trappers to Mexico. He had done that work for decades—not just trapping, but poisoning wolves,' Robinson continues. 'They hired [McBride] but with a twist, one he had never seen before: Keep them alive after you capture them.'
Rick LoBello, a former executive director at four national parks and longtime friend of the late trapper, tempers this: 'I told Roy once that he was riding the fence. One day he was out trying to save the wolves, and the next day he was out killing them. Wherever the money was, he would follow it.'
Out of the nine wolves that the government procured, only seven managed to mate, creating a very limited gene pool. It proved to be enough; after the release of the first mated pair in 1998, their numbers continued to grow. Taken on June 7, 2023, this photograph shows Asha having a health check before being released into the wild in southeastern Arizona. Photograph By Aislinn Maestas, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP
Because of this complicated history—and the wolves' near extinction—it's likely that Asha is inbred. In other wolf populations, like those on Isle Royale in Michigan, inbreeding has led to severe bone deformities, including misshapen spinal vertebrae, as well as increased incidence of fused digits (syndactyly).
Since the Mexican wolves were reintroduced, they have mated in the wild and produced healthy pups. These individuals have sometimes been captured and used for mating in captivity, though some have been left to their own devices in the wild. In 2014, FWS introduced a fostering program, where healthy, captive-born pups were taken from their parents and placed in the wild dens of mated pairs, alongside their natural offspring. The idea is that the wild wolves will raise and care for these foster pups with their own, thereby diversifying the gene pool. The agency announced in March 2024 that 'fostering is working,' and, as of 2023, 15 fostered pups had reached breeding age.
But activists and conservationists outside of the agency disagree that inbreeding is necessarily harmful. Robinson argues FWS's wolf recovery program isn't trying to ensure that Mexican gray wolves thrive in the wild at all. Instead, he says, the program is hobbling the population's growth through focusing on programs that have limited survivorship, like placing foster pups in the dens of unrelated mated pairs. Wolf advocates argue that the low survival rates are evidence that the fostering program is a failure.
'They need to be releasing bonded pairs with their pups. We haven't seen that happen in a long time,' Robinson says.
Whether or not genetic purity is necessary is also a topic of hot debate. At approximately 60 percent of the size of northern wolves, gray wolves are 'the most genetically distinct gray wolves in North America,' Heffelfinger explains. 'They're so unique, and so different.'
One reason the I-40 boundary was established was to prevent the Mexican gray from mating with wolves in the Rockies, which could happen if Asha were allowed to continue her travels north. This is the challenge: To increase the genetic diversity of the remaining grays, without diversifying so far that they start to resemble another species. 'Our legal obligation under the Endangered Species Act is to recover the Mexican wolf as it is listed in its uniqueness,' Heffelfinger says. 'And I think, personally, we have a moral obligation to not dilute the centuries and eons of evolution.' Asha should mate, he says, and she should do it in captivity, under the oversight of the FWS, and with her own kind.
The question of whether Mexican gray wolves should be allowed to mate with other gray wolves (or as Heffelfinger calls them, 'Canadian wolves') is at the core of the debate around where they are allowed to roam. By keeping Mexican grays confined to the areas south of I-40, FWS is following the Endangered Species Act as it currently stands. It is respecting the findings of scientific studies on the historic range of the species. FWS says that the Mexican gray wolf evolved to thrive in a lower-altitude, dry forested habitat known as the Madrean pine-oak woodlands, and it doesn't want to see them venturing onto higher, wetter ground.
Furthermore, Lute argues that we should allow released wolves to show us where they can thrive rather than impose arbitrary borders on their movements. The casualty of this approach may be the genetic purity of a species, but Lute sees this as no great loss. Nature, she argues, should take its course. 'This way of thinking, where we can define species along clear lines,' Lute says, is strictly a human perception. In a fostering program introduced in 2014 by FWS, captive-born Mexican gray wolf pups are taken from their parents and placed in the wild dens of mated pairs. The idea is that the wild wolves will raise and care for these foster pups, thereby diversifying the gene pool of the endangered subspecies. Photograph By Daniel Becerril, Reuters/Redux
Asha is a restless soul, an independent wanderer. She doesn't appreciate humans very much; her tendency to chew on any cameras in her pen means that all monitoring devices must be strung up outside the perimeter of the fence. According to FWS, she's the most active wolf at the facility—and curious too. But biologists don't believe that Asha's travels were inspired by that curiosity or some greater desire to see the world. They think she went loping up toward Colorado to find a mate. She's a pack creature; it simply doesn't make sense for her to strike out on her own.
Despite the disagreements over Asha's welfare, everyone agrees that her new status as a mother is a positive sign. Should she be released, she may feel less inclined to wander, now that she's started a pack. Or perhaps she'll keep traveling, this time with pups and mate in tow. The fate of Ella, another Mexican gray wolf (FWS name: F2996), shows yet another potential outcome for Asha and her offspring.
In late January 2024, FWS captured Ella as part of their annual count. In early February 2025, Ella escaped from her crate while being transported and ran from FWS officers. In her freedom, she traveled from outside Show Low, Arizona, to an area north of I-40 in New Mexico, near Mount Taylor. Ella was found dead at the end of March. Her death is under investigation by FWS, who recently confirmed that necropsy results show that she died via 'interspecies conflict, likely a bear or mountain lion.'
Like Asha's story, Ella's has been irreversibly politicized. For those in support of FWS's handling of Mexican gray wolf recovery, Ella's life and death are evidence of its soundness. Wolves should not be allowed north of the boundary; just look what happens. For those who oppose the official recovery zone, Ella is an example of how wrong the boundaries are.
'Her roaming was teaching us about where Mexican gray wolves choose to be,' said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project, in a statement. 'The agencies insist on keeping wolves south of Interstate 40 in Arizona and New Mexico based on the 'historic range' of the species, but wolves like Ella live in the present and they are showing us their species' future is in an expanded northern range.'
And before Ella, Anubis (or M2520) roamed north of the I-40 line in 2021 and was shot and killed a year later. He was wearing a bright pink tracking collar indicating, the Arizona Republic reported, 'the shooter knew the wolf was an animal of value to science.'
Though killing a Mexican gray is illegal, that is the leading cause of death for these animals. According to the organization Earthjustice, 'More than 70 percent of documented wolf fatalities are human caused,' with over 105 killed in the past two decades.
Robinson argues that FWS placates nearby ranchers, allowing them to get away with shooting endangered wolves. 'I thought it was a coyote,' is their get-out-of-jail-free phrase, Robinson says. The government, he says, has 'over and over again taken the side of ranchers against the wolves.' FWS disputes that: 'Our goal is to recover Mexican wolves in a way that balances the needs of people, predators, and livestock over the long term,' the agency says. 'We strive to achieve coexistence with and social tolerance for Mexican wolves, and we remain committed to the long-term recovery of this subspecies alongside thriving local communities.'
Heffelfinger scoffs at claims like Robinson's. 'They can advocate, and they can cast aspersions on agencies working with ranchers,' he says. 'But the truth is you are not going to recover a controversial carnivore on a working landscape by just saying, 'We're the government; here are the wolves.' No recovery will be successful if you don't work with them.'
And there are plenty of private landowners who welcome the return of the wolf, which is good news. While there have been dips and peaks in the population, the overall trend is toward growth, which adds credence to Heffelfinger's argument: 'We're here to recover the wolves,' he says. 'I'm not interested in people naming one wolf and talking about how she feels.' A Mexican wolf is released back into the wild with a radio collar. Anubis, another Mexican wolf, was wearing a bright pink collar when he was shot. Photograph By Mexican Wolf Interagency Field Team Defying borders
Another truth: Asha's fate is undecided. Right now, she's pacing and prowling, running in circles around her one rocky outcropping, her few scattered pines. She is with a companion she didn't choose in a place she doesn't want to be.
But maybe she's fine with both companion and place. Maybe her new litter of pups is a sign that Asha is content, healthy, and happily fulfilling her biological destiny. The problem with animals is that it's impossible to know their desires, and so we map our own onto them. It's possible that Asha is simply frantic because she doesn't like having humans so close. Still, it's hard to witness her distress. Heffelfinger would say I'm personifying Asha—wrongly so. But her story is so evocative, it's easy to imagine she too is stewing in uniquely human frustrations. It's easy to see her as a female lacking in agency, denied choices and freedoms.
Here is an even harder truth: What's best for Asha and what's best for Mexican gray wolves may not be the same thing. She represents an unruly tangle of contradictions, caught in decades' worth of history that has left the apex predator vulnerable. Asha may turn out like Ella; she and her pups may be released; or she may live in captivity for the rest of her life.
But Asha's story is about more than just Asha. Her fate has already set a precedent, one that could affect every endangered wolf that dares to cross an invisible boundary and be found suddenly in the spotlight, in the news, in peril. But as Asha and the other wandering Mexican gray wolves have made clear, the human-designed boundaries are not theirs.