MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is reporting the birth of the first known litter of Mexican gray wolves in the wild as part of a seven-year effort to re-introduce the subspecies to a habitat where it disappeared three decades ago.
Mexico's National Commission for Natural Protected Areas says the wolf pups were sighted in June by a team of researchers in the western Sierra Madre mountains.
It says the pups appeared to be doing well. The parents had been released in December, with hopes they would reproduce.
The Mexican gray wolf was almost wiped out in the U.S. Southwest. The last five survivors were captured between 1977 and 1980, then bred in captivity. The first wolves were re-introduced into the wild in the U.S. Southwest starting in 1998, mainly in Arizona and New Mexico.