Image(s): Left/ Robert Reck/Right/US Fish and Wildlife Service
In 1997, Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch in south-central New Mexico became part of an ambitious attempt to rescue the Mexican wolf from extinction. By 1998, wolves from that programme were being released in Arizona and New Mexico. The Ladder Ranch Wolf Management Facility was established in 1997, the same year Turner and his family helped create the Turner Endangered Species Fund.
Because Mexican wolves descended from a very small founding population, population growth and genetic management are central to recovery.
Fish and Wildlife Service says the last wild Mexican wolves were captured in the 1970s and used to establish a captive breeding programme. It is one of three primary captive pre-release facilities in the Mexican wolf recovery programme, according to TESF. TESF describes the facility as a “halfway house” between traditional captive facilities and the wild.
Rather than treating his vast ranchland simply as private property, Turner helped create a wolf management facility where endangered animals could be housed, bred and prepared for a return to the wild. The Mexican wolf, a distinct subspecies of grey wolf, had been driven from much of its former range by persecution and predator-control campaigns. The U.S. Ladder Ranch became an important link in that process, providing a controlled setting where wolves could reproduce and acclimatise while retaining natural behaviour. Animals can be housed, selectively bred and prepared for release, while wolves removed from the wild can temporarily return to managed care. Ladder Ranch became part of the conservation infrastructure needed to give wolf reintroduction a realistic chance for the recovery programme and reintroduction.
Decades later, the facility remains closely tied to efforts to rebuild wild Mexican wolf populations across the Southwest today.
The work at Ladder Ranch has extended well beyond its original 1997 breeding role. The sprawling property spanning more than 243 square miles in southern New Mexico has worked with the U.S, according to AP News. As reported by AP News, in 2021 the ranch took a further step by agreeing to host a translocated pack of wild Mexican wolves a mated pair and their pups moved from a wildlife refuge in central New Mexico to help boost the genetic diversity of the wild population. In 2015, New Mexico wildlife regulators declined to renew a permit in place for 17 years that had allowed the ranch to continue supporting the federal wolf programme.
Because of its distance from active livestock grazing allotments on the Gila National Forest, federal officials told AP News the ranch’s Seco Creek area, with its grasslands, pine forest and large resident elk herd, was chosen partly. Even so, the ranch has continued to serve as a site where wolves can be released into the wild or temporarily withdrawn from it, underscoring how a private ranching operation became, in AP News’ account, an unusually durable piece of infrastructure in one of the country’s most contested endangered-species recovery efforts.
Fish and Wildlife Service says wildlife biologists captured the last five remaining wild wolves to establish a captive breeding programme. The Service says captive facilities manage reproduction so wolves selected for release retain genetic diversity crucial to success. Fish and Wildlife Service said at the time that Ladder Ranch had been “an excellent partner in the recovery of Mexican wolves” and called itself “disappointed” in the commission’s decision; the permit was later reinstated.
The Mexican wolf, Canis lupus baileyi, once ranged across parts of the southwestern United States and Mexico. Decades of persecution and government-sponsored predator-control programmes nearly erased it from the wild. The U.S. The programme began with seven founding wolves. That history explains why every animal matters. Recovery requires increasing numbers without losing genetic diversity or behaviours needed for life in the wild. Ladder Ranch gave conservationists another carefully managed place to breed, hold and prepare wolves for reintroduction across the Southwest. Fish and Wildlife Service for years, hosting not only Mexican wolves but a wider range of endangered-species projects run through the Turner Endangered Species Fund, from Bolson tortoises to black-footed ferrets and aplomado falcons. That partnership has not been without friction. The ranch’s role in the recovery programme has, at times, run into local political resistance.
