#wildlife-monitoring

#wildlife-monitoring

It was a race against nightfall. As he hurried across the sandy, bristling landscape of California's Carrizo Plain, ecologist Ian Axsom stopped every 10 yards to place an aluminum live trap on the ground, eventually distributing traps over an area the size of two baseball fields. Against the rolling playas and tawny mountains, the traps glinted with golden remnants of the September dusk.

Since 2012, I've worked with the Tonkawa Foundation, in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Mexico, on the recovery of the Mexican wolf ( Canis lupus baileyi), a grey-wolf subspecies that had been hunted to near-extinction by the 1980s. Reintroducing wolves to the Chihuahua region will restore ecological balance and help to regulate other wildlife populations. The Mexican wolf's return not only helps to conserve biodiversity but also represents an act of reconciliation with a species that humans persecuted for decades.