Nine members of a wolf pack captured after cattle depredations on the White Mountain Apache Reservation have died, including six pups killed by a surrogate parent wolf, authorities said Wednesday.
The alpha male, the father of the six pups and three yearlings, was shot and killed Wednesday, after a long effort to try to capture it. It was killed by a member of the wildlife team overseeing the Mexican gray wolf recovery program.
That means that at most, only two yearlings and one pup believed to be about 4 weeks old are still alive, said Victoria Fox, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque.
The alpha female was captured Sunday and taken to an Alpine, Ariz., field office for the recovery program. She appeared healthy but was found dead Monday before a veterinary exam, the agency said.
One trapped male yearling also died. A second male yearling was trapped and taken to a facility in New Mexico. The status of the third yearling, whose gender is unknown, is uncertain, as is the pup's, Fox said.
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Six of the pups were captured Friday and taken to a wildlife refuge in Socorro County, N.M., where they were placed with a surrogate pair of wolves that had a two-pup litter, in hopes that the pair would care for the captured animals.
Fox said the male killed the six in an instinctive effort to protect his own two pups.
