Endangered Wolf Center
The Endangered Wolf Center is a non-profit wildlife facility in Eureka, Missouri, United States, near St. Louis that is dedicated to preserving and reintroducing to the wild critically endangered species of wolves. It is certified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The Center was founded in 1971 by renowned naturalist Marlin Perkins and his wife Carol, who saw that wolves around the world were in danger of becoming extinct. Its mission is to preserve and protect Mexican wolves, red wolves, and other wild canid species, with purpose and passion, through carefully managed breeding, reintroduction and inspiring education programs. Animals born at the facility have been reintroduced to North Carolina (red wolves) and Arizona and New Mexico (Mexican wolves). The Center's research focuses on reproductive, behavioral and nutritional needs for the species housed there. The Endangered Wolf Center is a founding member of the AZA’s Mexican Wolf and Red Wolf Species Survival Plans. As of August 2016, the Center had six species of endangered canids: Mexican wolves, red wolves, maned wolves, African painted dogs, fennec foxes and swift foxes. It had more than 20 Mexican gray wolves, more than any other managed breeding facility. (Only 97 Mexican wolves were known to exist in the wild as of 2015.) The Center serves as the cornerstone of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's program to preserve Mexican wolves and reintroduce them to the wild.
List of gray wolf populations by country
The United States as a whole has up to 18,000 wolves, about two thirds of which are in Alaska. They are increasing in number in all their ranges. Usually, however, wolves in the United States are mostly seen during the winter months in northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and portions of Washington, Idaho, northern Oregon, northwest Wyoming, and Montana, as the majority of wolf populations migrate from Canada to the Northwestern states & some of the Midwestern and Great Lakes States during the winter months for the competition over eating bison, elk, white tailed deer and other large ungulates, disputed between other carnivores such as grizzly bear, cougar, and coyote. Wolf recovery has been so successful that the United States Fish & Wildlife Service removed the western gray wolf from the federal endangered species list on March 28, 2008. Due to the controversy over wolf shootings, a coalition of environmental groups sued the federal government to put the gray wolf back on the Endangered Species list.
On July 18, 2008, a federal judge ruled in favor of renewed endangered species protection.
Alaska has a stable population of 10,500-12,000 wolves, which are legally hunted from August to April ( in deer-rich areas ) as a big game species.