Moving silently, its head hung low with curious eyes peering from a soft face of gray and white fur, a wolf appears from under the low-hanging wild oak trees and moves stealthily toward us, wary of our movements and voices. Another appears ambling behind, this one’s coat completely blond, both now sniffing the air.
They sense that visitors mean treats, just as a venison meatball lobbed toward them lands in the nearby scrub. They trot over to enjoy a snack, their long coats quivering in the wind blowing across the mountaintop, their large paws padding the earth, resembling two somewhat timid dogs more than the vicious wild creatures of scary movies.
I’m at the California Wolf Center just a few miles outside of Julian, California, a mountain town just an hour from San Diego where many travel to enjoy pressed cider, apple-picking, pie and the quaint sundry shops. There will be a full moon this night, coincidentally call a “wolf moon,” and while I’m here during the day, it feels perfect to be hanging with these endangered wolves.
“Their big bad wolf reputation is a lot of mythos. They’re basically scaredy cats,” says my host, Ciera MacIsaac, the center’s wolf-care and reintroduction biologist. “In the wild wolves want nothing to do with us. They’re neophobic, meaning they’re scared of new things, especially humans.”
Wolf Yana, 10, and her blond daughter, 6-year-old Poppy, are Northwestern gray wolves, two of the center’s five ambassador wolves. While Northwestern gray wolves are not on the endangered list, the majority of the center’s wolves are Mexican gray wolves, of which there are only about 600 in existence worldwide. Some 241 are in the wild in the United States, just 15 to 20 in their namesake Mexico, 23 that call CWC home and the remaining at accredited facilities. The center educates visitors about their critically endangered status in the wild and the center’s reintroduction program of wolves to their native land in the United States and Mexico.
The wolves live a natural life here in large enclosures, enjoying native terrain as they would in the wild, despite getting close to the chain-link fence that separates them from us humans. The rest of the center’s 27 wolves, including two additional Northwestern gray wolves, live on land that sprawls across the 50-acre center behind the enclosures.
The CWC is part of the AZA SAFE Mexican Wolf binational recovery program, which stands for Saving Animals From Extinction, cross-fostering pups born at the center and reintroducing them into wild dens at locations tracked by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
SAFE selects wolf centers yearly to breed for reintroduction based on the genetics of the pack. One mama wolf averages seven to eight pups per litter. These are then transported and introduced into wild-wolf dens in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico at just one to two weeks old before their eyes open when they’re still consuming only mama’s milk.
“The SAFE program’s slogan is ‘Mom Can’t Count,’” MacIsaac jokes.
The new mama wolf apparently doesn’t notice the extra pups, and as hunting is innate to wolves—coming naturally and not having to be taught—they have no trouble acclimating into the wild with their new pack.
Wolves breed just once a year with all pups born in April after just a 63-day gestation period, though as MacIsaac explains, global warming’s impact is extending breeding season into May these days. Mexican gray wolves became critically endangered after numbers decreased from federal culling programs that reacted to ranchers and farmers fearful of their herds being attacked.
Just as MacIsaac explains that in the wild, wolves naturally prefer elk, javelina (a member of the peccary family that resemble wild pigs) and white-tail or mule deer, as if on cue a doe and young white-tail deer appear outside the property line. They pause and then scamper off into the trees, perhaps sensing Yana and Poppy’s proximity.
Besides venison meatballs, the center wolves enjoy mostly deer and elk meat along with fish donated by Sea World San Diego. They’re fed on a feast-or-famine schedule only twice a week, mirroring how they'd hunt in the wild, and often cache their meat by burying it to eat later. Despite being in captivity, their instinct anticipates a next meal might be far off.
Theresa Kosen, CWC’s executive director, tells me it takes around $1 million annually to fund the nonprofit center, mostly from donations, visitor fees from around 15,000 each year who come to learn about the wolves and two gift shops selling all things adorned with wolves—one onsite and one in downtown Julian.
After meeting the center’s three Mexican gray wolf ambassadors—Emma, Durango and Thor, readying for a scent enrichment session where they get to sniff different animal urine sprays and native white mountain sage that Maclsaac says is “basically catnip for wolves”—it’s time to say goodbye to these majestic beasts.
