Cincinnati Zoo moves wolves to N.Y. preserve

There are only about 200 Mexican gray wolves in the world.

CINCINNATI (AP) — A family of Mexican gray wolves will be able to stay together at a new home in upstate New York after outgrowing exhibit space at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Tika and Adonia and their eight pups left the zoo Tuesday for the Wolf Conservation Center, a private, not-for-profit preserve in upstate New York.

The 20,000-square-foot Wolf Woods exhibit where the pack had been living wasn’t large enough to support the group, and separating the 6-month-old pups from their parents would have been unhealthy for the adults and the pups, said Doug Feist, the Cincinnati’s curator of interpretive collections.

Tika and Adonia came to the Cincinnati Zoo in 2005 as part of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program’s efforts to save the critically endangered subspecies of the gray wolf. Before the program to capture them and start breeding programs in facilities such as zoos, there were only seven animals left in the wild in the early 1980s.

There are 38 to 50 Mexican gray wolves in the wild today in the high deserts of northern Mexico and southern Arizona and about 100 more in controlled facilities, zoo officials said.

“Right now, zoos are at capacity with the wolves, so the breeding program nationwide is on temporary hold, in many ways victim of its own success,” Feist said.

The program controls breeding and has restricted it to the center in South Salem, N.Y., until the zoo population thins out through release into the wild or sending the wolves to preserves.

The wolves had been one of the zoo’s most popular attractions since the adults’ arrival in May 2005, and the public appeal grew after the birth of their eight pups this year, Feist said.

Hundreds of people a day viewed the wolves at the compound they shared with gray foxes, river otters, wild turkeys and striped skunks.

Two females arrived Monday to replace the family, and will go on exhibit after spending a few days in quarantine.